Tutorial Exercise 2: Displaying Data
Name and Surname
Student number
Instructions:
Read the questions listed below, and then, with these questions in mind, read
“Tutorial 2: Displaying data” from Tredoux and Durrheim (2019).
Then, attempt to answer the questions below.
Declaration: By submitting this tutorial exercise for evaluation, I declare that,
although I may have consulted with my tutor and/or other students in my class
about the work in this tutorial exercise, I typed my own responses into this
document, and that the final product is therefore my own work. I understand that if
I copy and paste the work of another student into my tutorial exercise, that this
constitutes cheating and academic misconduct on both my part and the other
student. Students who cheat on this tutorial exercise will be referred for disciplinary
action as per UKZN student rules.
Use the scenario and graph below to answer Qs1-6:
A researcher has drawn up a bar graph detailing the answers given by UKZN
students on the 5-point Likert-scale to the statement, “An isiZulu module should be
compulsory for all undergraduate UKZN students.”
18
16
14
12
10
Frequency
0
Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly
Disagree
Q 1. Are the number of observations (i.e., the frequency) per category of
responses by students plotted on the x-axis or y-axis? [1]
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PSYC201 Tutorial Exercise 2: Displaying Data
Q 2. Is the 5-point Likert Scale an example of a categorical/discrete variable, or a
continuous variable? [1]
Q 3. What is the total sample size that the researcher used? [1]
Q 4. What was the most frequent answer? [1]
Q 5. What was the frequency of students who “strongly agreed” with the
statement? [1]
Q 6. What was the frequency of students who were “neutral” about the statement?
[1]
Q 7. A bar graph is used to show the distribution of a _________ variable, while a
histogram is used to show the distribution of a ___________ variable. [2]
Use the data set and scenario below to answer Qs8-11:
You collect data from 50 students on the distance they need to walk (in kilometres)
to get to university. Your recorded data is below:
Q 8. Would you construct a bar graph or a histogram to show the distribution of the
distance (in kilometres) that students need to walk to get to university?
Explain why. [2]
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PSYC201 Tutorial Exercise 2: Displaying Data
Q 9. Starting at 1, and using an “Interval” of 3 (i.e., 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 etc), calculate and
present the frequency of the number of students who fall in the corresponding
interval. The frequency for the interval “1 to 3” has been inserted for you. [1]
Interval Frequency
1 to 3 10
4 to 6
7 to 9
10 to 12
13 to 15
16 to 18
Q 10. With the class interval ranges of 4-6 and 7-9 (like those used in the above
questions), what would be the real upper limit (RUL) and the real lower limit
(RLL) for both intervals? [2]
Class interval RLL RUL
4-6
7-9
Q 11. Calculate the frequency, cumulative frequency, percentage frequency and
cumulative percentage frequency (see textbook as an example) for your table.
[4]
Cumulative
Class Cumulative Percentage
Frequency percentage
interval frequency frequency
frequency
1-3 10 10 20 20
4 to 6
7 to 9
10 to 12
13 to 15
16 to 18
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PSYC201 Tutorial Exercise 2: Displaying Data
Histograms allow us to see what is going on with our data (i.e., spotting gaps,
spikes, extreme values, as well as the peak(s) and shape of a distribution).
The histogram below shows students’ response times (in seconds) to starting
to pack up their bags when a lecturer announces that a lecture is over. Use
this histogram to answer Qs12-15:
Histogram
10
7
Frequency
1 Mean = 7.56
Std. Dev. = 6.212
0 N = 25
-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Time
Q 12. Is the histogram depicted above unimodal or bimodal? Why? [2]
Q 13. Is the histogram positively or negatively skewed? [1]
Q 14. How many students are there in the above scenario? [1]
Q 15. What are the two ways in which you can check how many students are in the
above scenario? [2]
Q 16. If the distribution of students’ marks on a test was negatively skewed, would
this would mean that most students performed well or did not perform well on
the test? [1]
Total marks _______ [24]
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PSYC201 Tutorial Exercise 2: Displaying Data