Statistical tables can be classified under two general categories, namely, general tables and summary tables.
General tables contain a collection of detailed information including all that is relevant to the subject or theme. The main purpose of such tables is to present all theinformation available on a certain problem at one place for easy reference and they are usually placed in the appendices of reports.
Summary tables are designed to serve some specific purposes. They are smaller in size than general tables, emphasize on some aspect of data and are generally incorporated within the text. The summary tables are also called derivative tables because they arederived from the general tables. The information contained in the summary table aims at analysis and inference. Hence, they are also known as interpretative tables.
The statistical tables may further be classified into two broad classes namely simple tables and complex tables. A simple table summarizes information on a single characteristic and is also called a univariate table.