Statistical terminology for model building and validation

Statistics is the branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of numerical data.

Statistics are mainly classified into two subbranches:

• Descriptive statistics: These are used to summarize data, such as the mean, standard deviation for continuous data types (such as age), whereas frequency and percentage are useful for categorical data (such as gender).
• Inferential statistics: Many times, a collection of the entire data (also known as population in statistical methodology) is impossible, hence a subset of the data points is collected, also called a sample, and conclusions about the entire population will be drawn, which is known as inferential statistics. Inferences are drawn using hypothesis testing, the estimation of numerical characteristics, the correlation of relationships within data, and so on.

Statistical modeling is applying statistics on data to find underlying hidden relationships by analyzing the significance of the variables.