BUG: .describe() doesn't work for EAs #61707

doc/source/whatsnew/v3.0.0.rst

@@ -927,6 +927,7 @@ Other
 - Bug in :meth:`Index.sort_values` when passing a key function that turns values into tuples, e.g. ``key=natsort.natsort_key``, would raise ``TypeError`` (:issue:`56081`)
 - Bug in :meth:`MultiIndex.fillna` error message was referring to ``isna`` instead of ``fillna`` (:issue:`60974`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.describe` where median percentile was always included when the ``percentiles`` argument was passed (:issue:`60550`).
+- Bug in :meth:`Series.describe` where statistics with multiple dtypes for ExtensionArrays were coerced to ``float64`` which raised a ``DimensionalityError``` (:issue:`61707`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.diff` allowing non-integer values for the ``periods`` argument. (:issue:`56607`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.dt` methods in :class:`ArrowDtype` that were returning incorrect values. (:issue:`57355`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.isin` raising ``TypeError`` when series is large (>10**6) and ``values`` contains NA (:issue:`60678`)

pandas/core/methods/describe.py

@@ -251,6 +251,12 @@ def describe_numeric_1d(series: Series, percentiles: Sequence[float]) -> Series:
                 import pyarrow as pa
 
                 dtype = ArrowDtype(pa.float64())
+
+        elif any(type(item) != type(d[0]) for item in d):
+            # GH61707: describe() doesn't work on EAs
+            # when series entries cannot be cast to float64, set dtype=None
+            dtype = None
+
         else:
             dtype = Float64Dtype()
     elif series.dtype.kind in "iufb":

pandas/tests/series/methods/test_describe.py

@@ -92,6 +92,29 @@ def test_describe_empty_object(self):
         # ensure NaN, not None
         assert np.isnan(result.iloc[2])
         assert np.isnan(result.iloc[3])
+
+    def test_series_cast_to_float64_fails(self):
+        # https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/61707
+        from decimal import Decimal
+
+        from pandas.tests.extension.decimal import to_decimal
+
+        s = Series(to_decimal([1, 2.5, 3]), dtype="decimal")
+
+        expected = Series(
+            [
+                3,
+                Decimal("2.166666666666666666666666667"),
+                Decimal("0.8498365855987974716713706849"),
+                Decimal("1"),
+                Decimal("3"),
+            ],
+            index=["count", "mean", "std", "min", "max"],
+            dtype="object",
+        )
+
+        result = s.describe(percentiles=[])
+        tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected)
 
     def test_describe_with_tz(self, tz_naive_fixture):
         # GH 21332