Statistics Fundamentals: The Nature of Statistics

​Statistics have two broad meanings being (i) referring to data and (ii) referring to methods. Statistical methods includes (i) Descriptive Statistics and (ii) Statistical Inference. The following is guidance:
 
Descriptive Statistics is the study of how data can be summarized effectively to describe the important aspects of large data sets, which turns data into information; Statistical Inference involves making forecasts, estimates, or judgments about a larger group from smaller groups that were actually observed.
 
Foundation of statistical inference is probability theory. A population includes all members of a defined group. Moreover, parameters are descriptive measures of population characteristic; Samples are a subset of a population.
 
Additionally, what a parameter is too a population, a sample statistic (quantity computed from or used to describe a sample) is too a sample.