Descriptive statistics summarize and describe a set of observations, while inferential statistics make inferences about a population based on a sample of data from that population.

Descriptive statistics provides methods for organizing, summarizing and presenting data, such as measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode), measures of dispersion (range, variance, standard deviation), and graphical representation (histograms, boxplots).

Inferential statistics, on the other hand, uses the sample data to make generalizations about the population from which it was drawn, such as estimating population parameters, testing hypotheses, and constructing confidence intervals. This is important because often the population data is either not feasible or not possible to obtain, and the sample data is used to make decisions or predictions about the population.