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Statistics vocabulary · Reporting Results

Summary statistics

Meaning in statistics, with examples

nounCore term

In statistics, summary statistics means: A small set of numbers that describe a data set at a glance, typically the number of observations, the mean, standard deviation, median, minimum and maximum.

In Turkish: özet istatistikler

How it is used

Very close in meaning to descriptive statistics, but used more for the actual numbers in a table or in software output, such as R's summary() or Stata's summarize command. Economists and data teams often say 'summary stats'.

Example sentences

  1. Table 2 reports summary statistics for all variables used in the analysis.

  2. Can you send me the summary statistics before we meet? Just n, mean and SD by group.

Common collocations

  • table of summary statistics
  • summary stats
  • compute summary statistics
  • summary statistics by group
  • descriptive statisticsNumbers, tables and charts that summarise the main features of a data set, such as its centre, spread and shape, without drawing conclusions beyond the data.
  • meanThe sum of all the values divided by the number of values; the usual 'average' that describes the centre of a set of numbers.
  • standard deviationA measure of how spread out values are around the mean; a small value means the data sit close to the mean, a large one means they are widely scattered.
  • medianThe middle value when the data are put in order from smallest to largest; with an even number of values, it is the mean of the two middle ones.
  • rangeThe difference between the largest and the smallest value in a data set; the simplest measure of spread.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Reporting Results

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