Given data that is stored in a list, Array, or Vector, the statistics package can apply computational algorithms to find specific properties such as the average or expected value (the mean), or the standard deviation, etc.
[> with( Statistics ): [> data := [3.96, 1.93, 0.224, 8.00, 4.28, 8.43, 4.12, 9.96, 3.86, 6.95, 7.73, 7.31]: [> Mean( data );
$5.56283333333333$
[> StandardDeviation( data );
$2.92428234656372$
You will note that the same commands that determine staticstical characteristics of both discrete and continuous distributions also calculate those same characteristics of finite data sets.