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Summary Statistics Using Frequencies

Case Study: You manage a team that sells computer hardware to software
development companies. At each company, your representatives have a
primary contact. You have categorized these contacts by the department of
the company in which they work (Development, Computer Services,
Finance, Other, Don't Know). This information is collected in contacts.sav.
Saved in sample file folder;
The Frequencies procedure is useful for obtaining summaries of individual
variable/category.
Running SPSS for Frequencies analysis using contacts.sav file;
To run a Frequencies analysis, from the menus choose:
Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Frequencies...

Select Department as an analysis variable

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Click Charts.

Select Pie charts


Click Continue
Click OK in the Frequencies dialog box
The frequency table shows the precise frequencies for each category.

A pie chart is a good visual tool for assessing the relative frequencies of
each category.
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At a glance, you see that the majority of your contacts work in the computer
services departments of their respective companies, followed by those in
the financial and development departments.

Summary Measures for Scale Variables


There are many summary measures available for scale variables, including:
Measures of central tendency. The most common measures of central
tendency are the mean (arithmetic average) and median (value at
which half the cases fall above and below).
Measures of dispersion. Statistics that measure the amount of
variation or spread in the data include the standard deviation,
minimum, and maximum.
Open the Frequencies dialog box again.
Select Household income in thousands [income] and move it into the
Variable(s) list.
Figure 5-6
Scale variable selected for analysis

Click Statistics.
E Select Mean, Median, Std. deviation, Minimum, and Maximum.
Figure 5-7

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Frequencies Statistics dialog box

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