Word statistics is used as singular and plural both - Statistics in its plural sense may be defined as the numerically stated facts or facts expressed in figures and in its singular sense dealing with the methods of collection, compilation, tabulation and analysis of data so as to enable us to interpret the results meaningfully in realistic sense. Such statistics is called descriptive statistics. It does not consider concept of sample and population. Although it has less scientific value, it is used by applied worker specially for census data.
The third meaning of statistics – statistical inference deals with decisions about unknown population based on sample. Statistics as subject indicate this third meaning.
Thus statistics is the science and art of extracting information underlying the data and converting that to knowledge with the help of different disciplines of social and natural sciences. In other way one can say statistics is a discipline to convert theories of different context area to knowledge by validating it through data. Modern statistics helps to explore theories (for different context area) on the basis of data.
