E370

1/13/2015
Sampling, Classifying and
Graphing Data to get
information.
Week 2, Part 2: Classifying
Putyour data in an ordered array.
Reduce the bulk of the data by sorting
and creating summary tables.
regardless
of data type they are all
composed of
classes or categories
frequency
quantitative data frequency distribution
qualitative data summary table

Begin by Organizing Data

 Classes are categories, which is obvious for
categorical data, but not so obvious for
numerical data.
All sets of classes and categories must be
Mutually exclusive and
Collectively exhaustive
Consider eye color
Good categories are blue, green, hazel, brown,
black.
You may NOT have blue, green, blue or green, etc.
You may NOT have just blue & brown.

What are classes?

 Classes for numerical variables all have
class intervals
We would like them all the same.
class limits
Lower and upper limiting values
Open or closed?
class mark
Just the midpoint, the average of the limits.

What about numerical variables?

 Frequencies
absolute frequencya count of the observations
that fit in the class.
relative frequencythe absolute frequency divided
by the total number of observations.
cumulative (absolute) frequencythe absolute
frequency from a class PLUS the sum of all the
absolute frequencies in previous classes.
cumulative relative frequencysame as above, but
the frequencies are divided by the total number of
observations.

What goes into classes?