Descriptive statistics and frequency distributions

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This chapter is about describing populations and samples, a subject known as descriptive statistics. This will all make more sense if you keep in mind that the information you want to produce is a description of the population or sample as a whole, not a description of one member of the population. The first topic in this chapter is a discussion of "distributions", essentially pictures of populations (or samples). Second will be the discussion of descriptive statistics. The topics are arranged in this order because the descriptive statistics can be thought of as ways to describe the picture of a population, the distribution.