Descriptive, deductive and inductive reasoning

Descriptive statistics summarises the observations actually available. Deductive reasoning moves from a population model to implications for samples, often through probability. Inductive inference uses a sample to learn about a population, acknowledging uncertainty. A population is the full group of interest; a sample is a subset. A parameter describes a population, while a statistic is computed from a sample. Estimation and hypothesis testing are the two main inferential activities introduced here.