statistics

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data, especially the analysis of population characteristics by inference from sampling.
2. n. Numerical data.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A systematic collection of numbers relating to the enumeration of great classes, or to ratios of quantities connected with such classes, and ascertained by direct enumeration. Thus, a table of the populations of the different States of the American Union is called a table of statistics; so is a table showing the percentages of farms in different parts of the country that are mortgaged, provided these percentages have been ascertained from direct sampling, and not calculated by dividing the number of mortgaged farms by the total number of farms.
2. n. The study of any subject, especially sociology, by means of extensive enumerations; the science of human society, so far as deduced from enumerations.

Wiktionary

1. n. A mathematical science concerned with data collection, presentation, analysis, and interpretation.
2. n. A systematic collection of data on measurements or observations, often related to demographic information such as population counts, incomes, population counts at different ages, etc.
3. n. Plural form of statistic.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The science which has to do with the collection, classification, and analysis of facts of a numerical nature regarding any topic. The science dealing with collection, tabulation, and analysis of facts respecting the condition of the people in a state.
2. n. Classified facts of a numerical nature regarding any topic.
3. n. Numerical facts respecting the condition of the people in a state, their health, their longevity, domestic economy, arts, property, and political strength, their resources, the state of the country, etc., or respecting any particular class or interest; especially, those facts which can be stated in numbers, or in tables of numbers, or in any tabular and classified arrangement.
4. n. (Sport) Numerical facts regarding the performance of athletes or athletic teams, such as winning percentages, numbers of games won or lost in a season, batting averages (for baseball players), total yards gained (for football players). The creation and classification of such numbers is limited only by the imagination of those wishing to describe athletic performance numerically.
5. n. The branch of mathematics which studies methods for the calculation of probabilities.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a branch of applied mathematics concerned with the collection and interpretation of quantitative data and the use of probability theory to estimate population parameters