statistic
Americannoun
-
statistics
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of statistic
First recorded in 1815–20; back formation from statistics
Explanation
A statistic is a numerical piece of information. If you are trying to prove a point, and you want your argument to have a sense of authority, you might want to use a statistic to back up your claim. A statistic is a single piece of information represented by a number. “Water makes up 70% of the Earth’s surface,” for instance, is a statistic. A statistic is like a fact that is reached through a mathematical process. A population figure is the most common statistic you will encounter. When made plural, statistics means either a collection of statistics or the science of creating and interpreting statistics, as in “His favorite course in college was Statistics.”
Vocabulary lists containing statistic
Argumentative Writing
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Argumentative Writing, List 1
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Tears of a Tiger
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Changes in the statistic from year to year reflect changes in public health.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
For all the bad publicity directed frequently at the Los Angeles Unified School District and City Section schools, let’s point out an impressive statistic from the opening week of the high school football season.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2026
Bessent, in other words, picked the one statistic that told a happy story and built a press appearance around it, while the broader data he was being asked about pointed the other way.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026
Consider a statistic known as the r-squared, which measures the extent to which one data series explains or predicts another.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
Even though it would be his choice, the thought of being just another statistic for the scythes’ records infuriated him.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
Jillian Berman and Venessa Wong took a hard look at homeownership and rental statistics and interviewed many young adults who shared their stories about the housing market and talked about their financial goals.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 28, 2026
After making those corrections, the team developed a new method for reconstructing the glacier's internal ice in three dimensions using Bayesian statistics.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 28, 2026
“There was about seven decades of work that had to happen,” he said, tracing the origins to the late 1940s and early 1950s and studies on the statistics of language.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
In June, 2.3 million trips were made from Canada to the United States, up five percent from a year earlier, according to Canada's statistics agency.
From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026
I found Bureau of Justice statistics reporting that black men were eight times more likely to be killed by the police than whites.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
