Descriptive Statistics

R2026b

Numerical summaries and associated measures

Compute descriptive statistics from sample data, including measures of central tendency, dispersion, shape, correlation, and covariance. Tabulate and cross-tabulate data, and compute summary statistics for grouped data. For additional descriptive statistics functionality, see Descriptive Statistics and Insights.

Functions

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Central Tendency and Dispersion

`geomean`	Geometric mean
`harmmean`	Harmonic mean
`trimmean`	Mean, excluding outliers
`kurtosis`	Kurtosis
`moment`	Central moment
`skewness`	Skewness

Range, Deviation, and z-Score

`range`	Range of values
`mad`	Mean or median absolute deviation
`zscore`	Standardized z-scores

Correlation and Covariance

`corr`	Linear or rank correlation
`robustcov`	Robust multivariate covariance and mean estimate
`cholcov`	Cholesky factorization
`corrcov`	Convert covariance matrix to correlation matrix
`partialcorr`	Linear or rank partial correlation coefficients
`partialcorri`	Partial correlation coefficients adjusted for internal variables
`nearcorr`	Compute nearest correlation matrix by minimizing Frobenius distance

Tabulation and Grouped Data

`grpstats`	Summary statistics organized by group
`tabulate`	Frequency table
`crosstab`	Cross-tabulation
`tiedrank`	Rank adjusted for ties

Topics

Exploratory Analysis of Data
Explore the distribution of data using visualizations and descriptive statistics.
Measures of Central Tendency
Locate a distribution of data along an appropriate scale.
Measures of Dispersion
Find out how spread out the data values are on the number line.
Grouping Variables
Grouping variables are utility variables used to group or categorize observations.

Teaching Resources

Descriptive Statistics and Probability Distributions

Learn the concepts of descriptive statistics, and discrete and continuous distributions.