Financial and Statistical Terms

A person's income before all taxes are deducted.

The amount of income left after taxes are deducted; used for two types of expenses: essential expenses and discretionary expenses.

An expense that cannot be eliminated from a person’s day-to-day life; it might include rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, medical expenses, food, and loan payments.

Costs for goods or services that are non-essential.

Mathematics that deals with the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

A set of numbers.

Single indicators, such as the mean, median, and mode, designed to represent a “typical” value for the data. The mean and the median are numeric, while the mode can be a non-numerical value.

Often referred to as the average; the sum of all the numbers in a data set divided by the number of elements in the data set.

The middle number when the numbers are in ascending or descending order.

The most frequently occurring value in a data set; there can be more than one mode or no modes at all. It does not have to be numerical.