A statistic is a piece of numerical information collected from studying a group of things or people. When scientists count how many students in a school prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla, that number is a statistic. When a baseball announcer says a player has a batting average of .340, that's a statistic too.

Statistics help us understand patterns and make sense of large amounts of information. Instead of asking every single person in America what their favorite color is, researchers might survey 1,000 people and use that statistic to estimate what everyone thinks. A teacher might track statistics about test scores to see if students are improving. A basketball coach studies shooting statistics to figure out which plays work best.

Be careful: statistics can be accurate and useful, or they can be misleading. If someone says “nine out of ten doctors prefer this toothpaste,” that sounds impressive, but what if they only asked ten doctors, and nine of them worked for the toothpaste company? Understanding what statistics really mean, and where they come from, matters just as much as the numbers themselves.