Descriptive statistics are essential to making complex analyses useful.

In response to the ever-growing volume of data, quantitative social research has become increasingly dependent on complex inferential methods. In this post, Kevin R. Murphy argues that whilst these methods can provide insights, they should not detract from the significance of the comparatively simple descriptive statistics often found in table 1, which play an important role in communicating the significance of the research to policymakers and other research users.