Which of the following is a commonly used descriptive statistic?

Descriptive statistics are fundamental tools in statistics used to summarize or describe a set of data. They provide simple summaries about the sample and the measures. Among the options listed, ANOVA, while typically classified under inferential statistics, can be misleading as a descriptive statistic because it is primarily used to compare means among different groups to infer conclusions about a population.

In contrast, commonly used descriptive statistics include measures like mean, median, mode, ranges, and standard deviation which focus on summarizing the characteristics of the dataset. Therefore, the correct response would be a more commonly used descriptive statistic may not be explicitly listed in the choices provided.

Kendall's Tau, Chi-square test, and logistic regression are all techniques that fall under inferential statistics. Each has its specific purpose: Kendall's Tau is used for assessing correlations, the Chi-square test is for testing relationships between categorical variables, and logistic regression is used to model binary outcome variables. None of these functions provide a simple description of the data, hence they are not considered descriptive statistics.

The concept here is vital for understanding the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, an essential element in evidence-informed practice.