tabulates

Tabulates is the third-person singular present form of the verb tabulate. To tabulate means to organize data or information into a tabular arrangement, typically a grid of rows and columns. The resulting table presents items in rows and variables in columns, allowing easy comparison and analysis. Tabulation is a fundamental step in data processing and reporting.

Practically, tabulation involves selecting categories, counting occurrences, and calculating summaries such as totals, percentages, or means. In statistics, tabulated data are used to construct frequency tables, cross-tabulations, and pivot tables. In computing and data processing, tabulation is supported by software that outputs tables to screens, documents, or databases. Tabulated data can be stored in various formats, including relational tables in databases or structured text such as CSV or TSV (tab-delimited).

Historically, tabulation played a crucial role in data science and public administration. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mechanical tabulating machines were developed to count and classify census data, enabling large-scale statistical analysis and the growth of modern computing.

Beyond data processing, tabulation is also used in typesetting and publishing to align content; in spreadsheet programs, tabulating is common for creating reports, charts, and summaries. The term tabulates thus spans data science, statistics, information technology, and publishing, referring to both the act of creating tables and the result, a table of information.