Statistics plays a very important role in the field of economics. It helps in study of economics in many ways:

1. It helps to understand economic problems: By using various statistical tools, effort is being made to find the causes behind the economic problems with the help of qualitative and the quantitative facts. Once the causes of a problem are identified. it is easier to formulate certain policies to tackle them.

2. It enables an economist to present economic facts in a precise and definite form: Statistics help the economists to present economic facts with accuracy. It also helps in proper comprehension of that is stated in the subject matter. When economic facts are expressed in statistical terms. they become exact. Exact facts are more convincing than vague statements. For instance, saying 350 people have died in Kashmir unrest since 2000. is more accurate than saying that a lot of people have died in the unrest.

3. Helps in condensing mass data into a few numerical measures: Statistics condenses the mass data into a few numerical measures like mean, variance, correlation, etc. These numerical measures help to summarise data. For example, it would be impossible to remember the income of all the people of a country. But we can remember average income i.e., per capital income. 

4. It is used to find relationships between different economic factors: An economist may be interested in finding out what happens to the demand for a commodity when its price changes or what will be impact on inflation, when the government has more budget deficits. Such situations can be dealt, if any relationship exists between the various economic factors. Here, the nature of relationship can be studied with the help of statistical tools.

5. It helps in formulation of plans and policies: Sometimes, formulating plans and policies require the knowledge of future trends. For instance, an economic planner has to decide in 2010 how much the economy should produce in 2016-17. In other words, one must know what could be the expected level of consumption in 2016-17. So. the statistical tools to predict consumption in 2016-17 could be based on the data of consumption of past years obtained by surveys.