Descriptive statistics gives simple summaries of the desired sample and about the different observations that are made by the researcher. They can be either quantitative or visual, whatever be the choice of the researcher. They come of use at many stages during the entire course of research. In some researches, descriptive statistics form the fundamental basis for initial description and as pre requisite for more extensive research. In some researches, which are simpler in nature, they may by self-sufficient for a specific investigation.
Descriptive statistics has a history that goes back a long way in the past. What I understand by extensive reading is that it first showed its presence as a basic tabulation of the census data or the economic data of the country. Its application in all kinds of research has made its place in more recent times and it is considered an indispensable part of the exploratory data analysis.
When we talk in the field of business, it offers summary of varied types of data and comes of use to particularly investors and brokers to put to use historical account of the return behaviour. It is done by performing analysis so that one is able to make wiser investing decisions can be made in the future.
What we see as the most commonly used descriptive statistics is them mean. It is a means that helps to find out the central tendency and is to be analysed with a level of coefficient. When our sample size is large, it is so said that our mean comes out to be more accurate. The mean gives us the confidence intervals and from that we can have the range of values around which we can expect the mean to be located. On important reason for carrying out descriptive statistics is that it gives us the shape of the distribution and also the frequency of the values from the many ranges of the variable that have been found.
Even when you administer the most simplest of descriptive statistics, it is going to be of use, whether you are a researcher or an organisation. It would help you to know how close your data is in being normally distributed. Skewness and Kurtosis tells us how close it is to being normally distributed.
So whatever you area of research be, look into descriptive research and find it to add value to your research and take out more concrete and sound results.
