Descriptive Statistics and Data Normalization

Before building any model or running any analysis, the very first step is to characterize your data with descriptive statistics. These summaries capture the overall shape and behavior of a dataset, guiding downstream decisions about cleaning, feature engineering, and algorithm selection.

Four families of measures:

Practical rule: Always visualize data before and after any transformation — histograms, box plots, and scatter plots reveal patterns that summary numbers alone can miss.