The number of people that Market Research companies talk to during quantitative Market Research projects can frequently run into thousands. Unavoidably, this can result in very large sets of data. The human brain is limited in its capacity to deal quick incoming data, and when presented with large groupings of numbers, most people cannot normally hold them all in their mind at once.
It is hard to make any conclusions by simply looking at the data in its raw state; therefore it is useful to glean some kind of widespread impression or summary of what is going on. The main function of statistics is to accurately summarize the data points into easy explainable numbers. Some of the simplest statistics are described below:
Average (or mean) -
A mathematical term that is used to represent a number that has been calculated by adding several figures together, and dividing the total by the number of figures added.
Median and Mode -
The median is the value that falls in the middle of the set, the mode is the value that appears most often.
Median -
A median is described as the number separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one.
Measures of Dispersion -
In statistics, statistical dispersion (also called statistical variability or variation) is variability or spread in a variable or a probability distribution. Common examples of measures of statistical dispersion are the variance, standard deviation and inter quartile range.
The Range -
In descriptive statistics, the range is the length of the smallest interval which contains all the data. It is calculated by subtracting the smallest observations from the greatest and provides an indication of statistical dispersion.
The Mean Deviation -
The arithmetic mean of the absolute values of deviations from the mean of a distribution.
The Standard Deviation -
In probability and statistics, the standard deviation of a collection of numbers is a measure of the dispersion of the numbers from their expected (mean) value. It can apply to a probability distribution, a random variable, a population or a data set.
The standard deviation is usually denoted with the letter I (lowercase sigma). It is defined as the root-mean-square (RMS) deviation of the values from their mean, or as the square root of the variance.
Obviously the mathematical incline of these terms can be a little daunting for someone like you or I but that's okay. These figures aren't exactly for people like us they are mainly made as an acquisitional process that is used by Market Researchers to help figure out how to process the statistics in your business in regard to customers.
You can find a few really great market Research websites online that can further teach you about these particular stats and you might even find some websites that even have a few Market Research services which will enable you to better understand your customers and potential customers on a more personable level to find out what they really want from a business such as yours.
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