Answer:
Twelve percent of dog owners would prefer to own a cat.
Explanation:
Statistics is a practical application of mathematics, in which, through percentages, you can express data collected and its probability. It serves a lot of purposes and it is used in a lot of different fields. When you're trying to come up with evidence for an argument, and you have a statistic available it can help you prove it by comparing big chunks of data available, simply expressed as a percentage.
In this sentence, for example, it is clear that the writer doesn't know all the dog owners, but knowing the statistic you can make a claim about all of them.
