Descriptive statistics serve as the cornerstone of data exploration. This chapter covers the tools used to summarize and visualize data, including measures of central tendency, dispersion, and shape. We emphasize the importance of choosing appropriate graphical techniques to identify patterns, outliers, and relationships. The chapter also includes procedures for assessing normality and a primer on bivariate analysis, laying the groundwork for later inferential methods. Real-world business examples illustrate how descriptive techniques provide insight and guide further analysis.