TEM-515: STATISTICAL ANALYSES WITH COMPUTER

APPLICATION

Department of Transportation Engineering and Management

University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore

1
AIMS
• An aid to your understanding
• Introduction to SPSS
• Demonstrate practical use of techniques
• Chance for Q&A
• Assignments
Reading
Chaudhry, S. M., & Kamal, S. (2011). Introduction to
statistical theory. Ilmi Kithab Khana.

Wheeler, D., Shaw, G., & Barr, S. (2013). Statistical

techniques in geographical analysis. Routledge.

Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences, Agresti &

Finlay, 4th edition.
Part-1
So what is statistics? (and why is it so cool?)
The study of the methods for obtaining, organizing, analyzing, and
interpreting data.
Why bother? Principles provide a framework for
•Collecting data and the design of experiments and observational studies
(Design)
•Describing and summarizing data (Description)
•Drawing inferences about populations as a whole and predicting future
events (Inference)

Short story: Statistics is the science of using data to prove a point (and
hopefully forming a correct conclusion).
Descriptive & Inferential
statistics
Descriptive statistics:
summarize the data in the actual sample of data.
Descriptive statistics are ways of summarizing large sets of quantitative
(numerical) information. If you have a large number of measurements,
the best thing you can do is to make a graph with all the possible scores
along the bottom (x axis), and the number of times you came across that
score recorded vertically (y axis) in the form of a bar.
Inferential statistics:
provide predictions or generalizations about the population based on the
data we collected in the sample.
 Population Vs Sample
A population or a statistical population is a collection or set of all
possible observations whether finite or infinite, relevant to some
characteristic of interest.
Heights of all college students
Size of population (N): Number of observations in a finite population
Parameters –Numerical quantities describing a population

A sample is a subset of people, items, or events from a larger

population that you collect and analyze to make inferences. To represent
the population well, a sample should be randomly collected and adequately
large.
Size of sample (n): Number of observations included in a sample
Statistic- Numerical quantity computed from a sample
A parameter is a characteristic of a population. A statistic is a characteristic of a
sample. Inferential statistics enables you to make an educated guess about a
population parameter based on a statistic computed from a sample randomly drawn
from that population.
 Variables
Variable: Any characteristic that takes different values for different
individuals in a sample or population. ( age is variable as it varies from
person to person)
Two major Types of variables: categorical and quantitative
•A categorical variable is a variable that can take on a few different
values (categories) when measured. Sometimes called qualitative
variables. (education, gender, eye colour)
•A quantitative variable is a variable that is measured on a numerical
scale covering a large range of values. (age, weight, income, or no of
children)
Measurement scale: the type of measurements that the values of a
variable take. 3 kinds: nominal, ordinal, and interval.
Example: To represent a gender, we could define a dummy variable named
female, which would be 1 for all women, and 0 for all men:
Part-1
Any Questions
This week (SPSS)
• Introduction to SPSS
• Finding and starting SPSS
• The data editor
• Defining variables
• Data entry
• Simple scatter graphs
• Calculation of correlation coefficient
Introduction to SPSS
• Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
• A tool for statistical analysis and data management
• Generates descriptive statistics, reports, graphs and plots
• Windows type interface (user friendly?)
• On line tutorial and help facility
• Interfaces with Word and Excel
Basic steps in analysis
The Data Editor
• SPSS front end
• View, input and manipulate data
• Spreadsheet type display
• Two views - data view and variable view
• Variable view - Used to describe
variables and data
• Data view - used to input and view data
Entering data into SPSS
• Data may be entered directly, loaded
from an SPSS data file or imported from
a spreadsheet e.g. Excel
• Each column represents a variable e.g.
vehicle speed, engine size etc
• Each row represents a unit of analysis
or case e.g. first car, second car etc
Variable view

• 10 characteristics: Name, Type, Width,

Decimals, Label, Values, Missing,
Columns, Align and Measure
Characteristics
• Name - variable name
• Type - data type e.g. numeric, date, text
• Width - number of digits or characters
• Decimals - number of digits after decimal point
• Label - description used on charts and graphs
• Values - Descriptive labels applied to values
• Missing - tells SPSS how to treat missing values
• Columns - column width in data view
• Align - left, right or centre alignment
• Measure - scale, ordinal or nominal data
Data view