What is a Statistical Model and How Does it Aid in Making Inferences?

[jackyj1]

This might sound like a ridiculous question, but could someone please give an intuitive explanation of what a statistical model is? I have always thought that it was just a tool used to make inferences about data, but I was told very recently that this definition is not entirely correct. Could someone explain?

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Perhaps no verbal definition of a general idea can be entirely correct. Give us a hint - what did the person who objected to your definition say about its deficiencies? If we know that, perhaps we'll know what topics to discuss.

 

[chiro]

Hey jackyj1 and welcome to the forums.

Statistics is primarily concerned with using probability to do things like make inferences. Probabilistic models may not necessarily do this even in part.

From this if you are talking about statistical models, you will most likely want to be talking about something that helps you make an inferential decision of some sort.