Chapter 1 - The Nature of Probability and Statistics - 1-1 Descriptive and Inferential Statistics - Exercises 1-1 - Page 5: 5

Descriptive statistics consists of the collection, organization, summarization, and presentation of data. Inferential statistics, on the other hand, consists of generalizing from samples to populations, performing estimations and hypothesis tests, determining relationships among variables, and making predictions.

In descriptive statistics, the statistician tries to describe a situation while in inferential statistics, the statistician tries to make inferences from samples to populations.