Noun

(uncountable) Diligent inquiry or examination to seek or revise facts, principles, theories, applications, etc.; laborious or continued search after truth.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Philip E. Mirowski , title=Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits , volume=100, issue=1, page=87 , magazine= citation , passage=In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research , the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.}}

(countable) A particular instance or piece of research.

* Macaulay

The dearest interests of parties have frequently been staked on the results of the researches of antiquaries.

* 1747 , The Scots magazine (volume 9, page 567)

The first step I took in this so necessary a research , was to examine the motives, the justice, the necessity and expediency of the revolution

Noun

(statistics)

(singular in construction) A mathematical science concerned with data collection, presentation, analysis, and interpretation.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Robert L. Dorit , title=Rereading Darwin , volume=100, issue=1, page=23 , magazine= citation , passage=We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.}}

Statistics is the only mathematical field required for many social sciences.

(plural in construction) A systematic collection of data on measurements or observations, often related to demographic information such as population counts, incomes, population counts at different ages, etc.

The statistics from the Census for apportionment are available.

English plurals