BASIC DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS
Introduction
We will focus on Summary Statistics. These are the different measures
that are used to describe any set of data. If we want to know the typical
value of a certain variable, how different the values are from one
another, ho6w a certain data point compares to the rest, we can use
these measures.
Frequency Distribution
Frequency is simply the number of occurrences of an event. A frequency
distribution is a list, table or graph that displays the frequency of various
outcomes in a sample. It tells us how many there are of each item in the
data set.
Frequency Distribution
A frequency distribution is an overview of all distinct values in some variable and
the number of times they occur.
That is, a frequency distribution tells how frequencies are distributed over values.
Frequency distributions are mostly used for summarizing categorical variables.
That's because metric variables tend to have many distinct values. These result in
huge tables and charts that don't give insight into your data. In this case,
histograms are the way to go as they visualize frequencies for intervals of values
rather than each distinct value.
Anyway. Let's look at some examples of frequency distributions.
Frequency Distribution - Example
We had 183 students fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions was
which study major they're following. The screenshot below shows part of
these data.
Frequency Distribution - Example
We had 183 students fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions was
which study major they're following. The screenshot below shows part of
these data.
Frequency Distribution - Table
So what about these study majors? Just gazing at our 183 values isn't
going to help us. A more viable approach is to simply tabulate each
distinct study major in our data and its frequency -the number of times it
occurs.
The resulting table (below) shows how frequencies are distributed over
values -study majors in this example- and hence is a frequency
distribution.
Frequency Distribution - Table
The most popular study major is psychology (n = 62). “Other” is the least
popular major (n = 16). The remaining majors are roughly equally
popular (n between 33 and 37).
Note that the frequencies add up to our sample size of 183 students. This
is always the case unless a variable contains missing values:
respondents can sometimes skip a question or answer “no answer” or
something similar.
Relative Frequencies
Optionally, a frequency distribution may contain relative frequencies:
frequencies relative to (divided by) the total number of values. Relative
frequencies are often shown as percentages or proportions.
Relative Frequencies
Relative frequencies provide easy insight into frequency distributions.
Besides, they facilitate comparisons. For example,
“67.5% of males and 63.2% of females graduated”
is much easier to interpret than
“79 out of 117 males and 120 out of 190 females graduated”.
Right? Right.
Relative Frequencies and Probability
A special type of relative frequency is a probability.
A probability is a relative frequency over infinite trials.
So stating that “a coin flip has a 50% probability of landing heads up”
technically means that if we'd flip the coin an infinite number of times,
50% -a relative frequency- of those flips will land heads up.
Now, we obviously can't flip a coin an infinite number of times so we
can't prove this claim with certainty. However, if we flip our coin many
(say 100) times, then the relative frequency of heads landing up should
probably be close to 0.5 (or 50%).
Relative Frequencies and Probability
A very different outcome may have a low probability value or p-value. We
often state that an effect is statistically significant if p < 0.05. This simply
means that our sample outcome -some percentage, correlation, mean
difference or whatever- should occur in less than 5% of all samples if we
could draw an infinite number of random samples. Such a relative
frequency -or probability- being very low implies that our data are
unlikely given some our null hypothesis -which is therefore rejected.
Ok. Nevermind. Let's move on with frequency distributions.
Frequency Distributions - Cumulative
Frequencies
A cumulative frequency is the number of times that
a value and all values that precede it occur.
That is, the frequencies accumulate over values -hence “cumulative”.
The same reasoning goes for cumulative relative frequencies as shown in
the figure below.
Frequency Distributions - Cumulative
Frequencies
In this example, we immediately see that 73.2% of all respondents rate
our course at least “Good”. It is the relative frequency for “Good” and all
values that precede it -in this case only “Very Good”.
Regarding cumulative frequencies, don't overlook that
Frequency Distributions - Cumulative
Frequencies
cumulative frequencies depend on the order in which values are listed in
a frequency table. If we'd reverse our table, the cumulative percentage
for “Good” would be (3.8% + 23% + 50.8% =) 77.6%. This is the
percentage for “Good” or a worse rating.
cumulative frequencies are not useful for nominal variables. This is
because their values don't have an inherent order. For example, it
doesn't make sense to say that “25.3% of our respondents are at least
French.”
Frequency Distributions - Bar Charts
One common visualization of a frequency distribution is a bar chart as shown below.
This is a simple chart but do note a couple of important points:
Frequency Distributions - Bar Charts
Each distinct value is represented by a bar. So a variable with many distinct
values (birthday or monthly income) will have a vast number of bars and is
therefore not suitable for a bar chart. For such variables, a histogram is a
better idea.
The category axis is not linear: the distance (in centimeters) between 1 and 2
is the same as between 4 and 7. So we can't say that one centimeter
represents a difference of 1 or 3 courses.
Zero frequencies are omitted from the chart. For example, none of these
students took 5 courses. This is why 5 does not occur at all on the category
axis.
None of these features hold for a histogram, which may look similar to a bar
chart but really isn't the same.
Frequency Distributions - Pie Charts
An alternative visualization for a frequency distribution is a pie chart as
shown below.
Frequency Distributions - Pie Charts
It could be argued that this pie chart is a better visualization than the
aforementioned bar chart: our 5 percentages must add up to 100% and
are thus not independent. The pie chart kinda visualizes this
dependency: if one slice of the pie grows, at least one other must shrink.
This doesn't hold for the bars in a bar chart -which wrongly suggests that
the (relative) frequencies are independent.
WORKING AS SELF-EMPLOYEED
Number of
Demographic Percentage %
Respondents
Profile
Age
30 Years Old & Below 157
31 Years Old & Above 168
Total 325 100%
Sex
Male 189
Female 136
Total 325 100%
WORKING AS SELF-EMPLOYEED
Demographic Cumulative
Frequency Percentage %
Profile Percent
Very Satisfied 145
Satisfied 89
Dissatisfied 65
Very Dissatisfied 26
325 100%