When you set-up an experiment, you want to establish a prediction or hypothesis. Your research results will either validate your hypothesis or disprove it. If you were conducting an experiment to turn a liquid pink or blue- your hypothesis will be that a liquid  will be one of the colors. If you have data that contains actual measurements, your results may represent statistics. Typical statistics are a Student-t-test, regression , or something else. But you must always remember to establish your hypothesis before you carry-out your experiment.  You would be surprised how many times, I have consulted a researcher who had data but no research hypothesis established from the very beginning.

-Moore to Follow-Amy