The emphasis upon the decision-makin aspects of statistics is a recent one. In its early years, the study of statistics largerly consisted of methodology for summarizing or describing numerical data. Any aspects facilitating choice were secondary in importance to the then essentially reportorial nature of the subject. Tis area of study has become known as descriptive statistics because it is concerned largerly with summary calculations and graphical displays. These methods are in contrast with the modern approach, where generalizations are made about the whole, called the population, by investigating a portion, reffered to as the sample.
