What is the quickest way to review basic descriptive statistics for a variable?

You can either select Descriptive Statistics from the Basic Statistics and Tables Startup Panel (accessible from the Statistics menu), or click the Values/Stats button in the Variable specifications dialog box, accessed by double-clicking on a variable name in the spreadsheet. Alternatively, right-click on the variable name and select Variable Specs from the shortcut menu.

After you click the Values/Stats button, the resulting dialog box displays information about the selected variable, a sorted list of its values, and descriptive statistics. The descriptive statistics can be copied to the Clipboard by clicking the Copy button (see the lower part of the window in this illustration).

For information about producing descriptive statistics for columns or rows of the currently selected block of values, see What are statistics of block data?.