What is the purpose of Statistics?

When non-statisticians think of statistics, the first thing that usually comes to mind is data. Large amounts of economic, social and administrative data are routinely collected and published. Most researchers also collect data. Statistical analysis uses data, but the data are not the goal.

Data are the basic commodity of the statistics. Without data, there is no information on which to reach conclusions or base decisions.

Data contain information.
The purpose of statistics is to extract information from data.

Large data sets must be summarised before patterns and relationships can be seen. In smaller data sets, the problem is usually that there is not enough information to get a clear answer to questions of importance. Statistical methods are needed to describe precision and to ensure that the highest precision is obtained.

Context

In general, users of statistics are neither interested in data or in statistical methods, but are only interested in questions in their own subject area.

The aim of statistics is to supply useful information to people whose main area of expertise is not statistics. Statistical methods are only useful if they can extract information from data to help answer discipline-specific questions. The underlying context is therefore the most important aspect of any statistical analysis.

If you are not primarily a statistician, you will appreciate statistical methods when they are needed in your career!