.. Copyright (C) Google, Runestone Interactive LLC This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. What Is A Statistic? ==================== Many people discuss statistics, but not everyone knows what a statistic actually is. .. admonition:: Statistic Definition **A statistic is a fact of the data.** A statistic is any piece of information you can get from a set of data. For example, suppose you have a dataset containing the heights of all students in this class. .. image:: figures/height_statistic.png :align: center The following are all statistics from that dataset. - The shortest height is 146cm. - The tallest height is 192cm. - There are 19 students in this class. - The average height is 166.16cm. - The sum of all heights in the class is 3157cm. - Half the maximum height is 96cm. Some statistics are more common and useful than others. For example, knowing the average height will likely be more useful in real life than knowing the sum of all heights. This chapter will guide you through the most common descriptive statistics. Suppose you have a dataset on how far students travel to get to school. .. image:: figures/distance_statistic.png :align: center .. shortanswer:: students_travel_statistics What are some important statistics of the dataset above?