Why not just describe your sample?” The answer to the question is usually something like this: “Because our true interest as scientists is not the specific sample that we have observed in the past, we...Why not just describe your sample?” The answer to the question is usually something like this: “Because our true interest as scientists is not the specific sample that we have observed in the past, we want to make predictions about data we might observe in the future”. A lot of the issues in statistical inference arise because of the fact that we always expect the future to be similar to but a bit different from the past.
