Descriptive analysis summarizes data in simple terms like measures of central tendency. Exploratory data analysis helps discover relationships between variables to form hypotheses. Inferential analysis generalizes from a sample to a larger population. Predictive analysis uses data to make future predictions, while causal analysis finds the causes of correlations. Hypothesis testing uses sample data to evaluate hypotheses about populations, and involves specifying null and alternative hypotheses, setting a significance level, calculating test statistics and p-values, and drawing conclusions about rejecting or failing to reject the null hypothesis. Type I errors incorrectly reject a true null hypothesis, while type II errors fail to reject a false null hypothesis.