Data analysis can be one of the most frustrating aspects of science for students, but it is also one of the most essential. Statistical analysis helps us first to summarize our data and see the broad patterns, or trends. Statistics of this type allow us to briefly describe the important elements of our data, so they are called descriptive statistics.
A second type of statistics help us to decide if the trends we see in our samples represent real trends in the populations our samples are drawn from. Because they help us make inferences from our results, they are called inferential statistics. A full course in statistical analysis is beyond the scope of these resources, but we will touch on the basics.