Statistics is the scientific field of applied math that works around the collecting, classifying, presenting and interpreting data for various purposes. It is one of the basic subjects that the average student will encounter in his years of formal education. Statistics help in the collection, characterization and interpretation or pieces of information that would help an individual produce a conclusion.

This can be applied in almost all fields of learning, especially for research purposes. For example, sociologists need the help of statistics in order to draw out observations of the behaviors of people based on frequency. Also, statistics help economists and businessmen alike determine the trends of price rates, international exchange rates, consumer rates and other matters that may affect the economic climate. Bottom line is, almost all fields of human activity that require information – whether it is based on purchases, health, basketball games and even culture – can be better facilitated with statistics' help.

Basically, being the qualitative aspect of research, the principle behind statistics is generalization. What statistics does is that it applies certain methods to gather empirical data that are usually represented by numbers and apply certain formulae that will process those numbers to derive a value which can be interpreted by the statistician through logical analyses. For instance, statistics help in determining if majority of people who don't engage in sports are obese through data gathering. If, in one area, there are indeed more people who are obese are not engaging in sporting activities, then it can be logically derived that sporting activity actually has a significant effect towards one's weight, especially in the area where the data was collected. The rationale behind the principle of generalization is that statistics help by getting a good basis of information from populations or sample data that would otherwise be impossible to study one by one.

As mentioned earlier, statistics is the qualitative aspect of research. So in terms of research, statistics help mainly in the drawing of samples to study on, guiding of the framework of analysis plan, and representing data in numeric form for interpretation.

Like most scientific processes, statistics follows the scientific method. Problems are also identified, ideas and theories are sought, hypotheses are formulated and such hypotheses are tested and confirmed or rejected. This helps determine the problem or information that needs to be sought, identify the formulae to be applied and which variables would represent which elements in the problem.

Clearly, statistics is not a subject matter to be taken lightly. As a matter of fact, those who take it for granted usually end up knowing nothing anything about the subject at all. This is why there are very few competent statisticians who can carry the social function of their profession well. Being a field that is very essential for the knowledge and improvement of society, those who invoke statistics' help must with strict discipline maintain accuracy of the methods and values that are used to come up with the kind of important information and data that only this field of math could produce.