What is descriptive statistics in data analysis?

Descriptive statistics is a branch of statistics that focuses on summarizing and organizing data in a meaningful way. It provides a clear picture of the main features of a dataset. This can include measures of central tendency like mean, median, and mode, which describe the typical values in the data. It also encompasses measures of variability, such as range, variance, and standard deviation, which indicate how spread out the data points are. For example, if a teacher collects test scores from a class, descriptive statistics can help summarize this data to understand overall student performance.