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Post #6: Traditional Statistics: Descriptive and Inferential in Big Data

Two types of Traditional statistics in Big data include Descriptive and Inferential. Descriptive means averages and working on sets of numbers. Descriptive statistics is a type of statistic in which a data set is summarised and the characteristics are described. This descriptive data is usually displayed through the use of tables, charts etc. but is most commonly reported as a measure of a central tendency. A central tendency is a typical value for a distribution, it is also been known to be called a location or centre of the distribution. The arithmetic mean is the most common measure of a central tendency, this is the median and the mode. The mean is the average of all the values, the median is the exact middle of the data set while the mode is the most frequent value in the data set. 

 The goal of traditional statistics is analysing and summarising data, providing tight assumptions about the problem and data distributions as well as using conservative techniques and approaches.  

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