Descripitve Stats

Student’s Name
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Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics are used to summarize data to provide easy insights of large quantitative data. Through short summaries, descriptive statistics describe features of data in ways that are easy to understand. In a study to analyze the older households’ health care expenses, Banerjee uses descriptive statistics to present the data collected for the health care costs for the 65-and-above years households (8). Histograms are used to compare the recurring costs for different health care services; dentist visits, doctor visits, and prescription drugs. The histograms also describe the median, average, and 90th percentile expenses for each of the healthcare services (Banerjee 9).
Histogram presents an effective way of representing the data collected in the study. This is because it provides an opportunity for the costs of the different services to be compared. Histograms provide an easily understandable synopsis of the numerical data. For example, for the recurring health care expenses, it can easily be seen that the prescription drugs have the highly recurring cost compared to the other health services (dentist visits and doctor visits) (Banerjee 9). The median, average, and 90th percentile costs for each of the health care services can also be compared based on the heights of the bars. The average expense represents the mean of the sample of recurring health care expenses (“Statistics: The Average”). The median is the expense that equally divides the ordered sample of expenses into two, while the 90th percentile is the expense at which 90% of the ordered sample of expenses falls below (“Mean, Median, And Mode Review”).

Another method that would be effective in presenting these data is the pie chart. Pie charts would also allow a quick visual comparison of the health care costs based on the sizes of the portions.
Works Cited
Banerjee, Sudipto. “Differences in Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenses of Older Single and Couple Households.” (2016).
“Mean, Median, And Mode Review.” Khan Academy, 2018,
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/summarizing-quantitative-data/mean-median-basics/a/mean-median-and-mode-review?ref=statistics-probability_articles. Accessed 11 July 2018.
“Statistics: The Average.” Khan Academy, 2018, https://www.khanacademy.org/math/in-in-class-7th-math-cbse/in-in-7th-data-handling/in-in-7th-data-handling-mean-median-basics/v/statistics-the-average. Accessed 11 July 2018.