STATISTICAL METHODS

Descriptive Measures
 MEASURES OF CENTRAL
TENDENCY
Prof. R.A. Fisher:
The inherent inability of the human mind to
grasp in its entirety a large body of numerical
data compels us to seek relatively few constants
that will adequately describe the data.
Measures:
Arithmetic mean
Median
Mode
STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION
 Arithmetic Mean
Arithmetic Mean (AM)
This is the sum of all observations
divided by the number of observations
in the set.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

Properties of Arithmetic Mean

The sum of the deviations of the

observations from the AM is always zero.
The sum of the squared deviations of the
observations from the AM is minimum.
The arithmetic means of several sets of
data can be combined into a single AM for
the combined sets of data.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 MEDIAN
The median is defined as the middle most
observation in the sense that one-half the
number of observations is less than the
median while the other half of
observations is larger than the median.
The median is the value of the [(n+1) / 2] th
item when the n items are ordered in
ascending or descending order of magnitude.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 Property of Median

The sum of the absolute deviations

about the median is the minimum.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 Mode
The mode is defined as the
value of the variable which
occurs most frequently

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 MEASURES OF VARIABILITY
R ange : The range of a set of
observations is the difference
between the largest observation and
the smallest observation.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 I nterquartile R ange : The
interquartile range is the difference
between the third quartile and the first
quartile.
Range of the middle half.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 MEASURES OF VARIABILITY
Variance : The variance of a set of
observations is the average squared deviation
of the data points from their mean
The positive square root of the variance is
called the standard deviation.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

Chebyshevs Theorem

At least (1 - 1/k2) of the items in any data set will be

within k standard deviations of the mean, where k is
any value greater than 1.
At least 75% of the items must be within

k = 2 standard deviations of the mean.

At least 89% of the items must be within

k = 3 standard deviations of the mean.

At least 94% of the items must be within

k = 4 standard deviations of the mean.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION
Example
A data set consists of the waiting times
of customers at the checkout counter of
a food store during the past week. The
mean waiting time was 4 minutes and
the standard deviation was 0.9 minute.
At most 25% of the customers waited
less than 2.2 minutes or more than 5.8
minutes.
STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION
Coefficient of Variation :
CV = ( / ) 100.
x
CV is a pure number and independent of
unit of measurement.
CV expresses the standard deviation as a

percentage of the mean.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

Symmetry
A distribution of data in which the right
half is a mirror image of the left half is
said to be symmetrical.
Skewness is said to be present when a
distribution is asymmetrical or lacks
symmetry.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

Skewness

Negatively Symmetric Positively

Skewed (Not Skewed) Skewed

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

Box Plot

Smallest Value
First Quartile
Median
Third Quartile
Largest Value

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

 Box Plot
A box is drawn with its ends located at
the first and third quartiles.
A vertical line is drawn in the box at the
location of the median.
Whiskers (dashed lines) are drawn from
the ends of the box to the smallest and
largest data values.

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION
Example
A factory has two units producing and
packing a particular type of Ice cream
in suitable boxes. These boxes are
specially designed to maintain cool
temperature so that they comfortably
reach the destinations, namely, ice
cream parlours. The process time to
produce, pack and ship the ice cream
for these two units are given below:
STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION
 Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 1 Unit 2
11 19 23 12
11 23 15 25
33 33 15 18
22 25 16 26
23 52 9 12
43 31 21 5
17 29 15 29
17 26 19 11
11 27 15 13
23 20 18 19

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION

STATISTICAL METHODS INTRODUCTION