NORMS AND BASIC STATISTICS FOR TESTING

What Is a Frequency Distribution?

 A frequency can be defined as how often something happens. For example, the
number of dogs that people own in a neighborhood is a frequency.
 A distribution refers to the pattern of these frequencies.
 A frequency distribution looks at how frequently certain things happen within a
sample of values. In our example above, you might do a survey of your neighborhood
to see how many dogs each household owns.

A frequency distribution is commonly used to categorize information so that it can be interpreted in a

visual way.

Let’s say you obtain the following set of scores from your sample:

1, 0, 1, 4, 1, 2, 0, 3, 0 2, 1, 1, 2, 0, 1, 1, 3

The first step in turning this into a frequency distribution is to create a table. Label one
column the items you are counting, in this case, the number of dogs in households in your
neighborhood.

Next, create a column where you can tally the responses. Place a line for each instance the
number occurs.

Finally, total your tallies and add the final number to a third column.

Number of Dogs in HouseholdTallyFrequency

0 |||| 4

1 ||||| || 7

2 ||| 3

3 || 2

4 or more | 1

Using a frequency distribution, you can look for patterns in the data. Looking at the table above you
can quickly see that out of the 17 households surveyed, 7 families had one dog while 4 families did
not have a dog.
Another Example of a Frequency
Distribution
For example, let’s suppose that you are collecting data on how many hours of sleep college
students get each night. After conducting a survey of 30 of your classmates, you are left with
the following set of scores:

7, 5, 8, 9, 4, 10, 7, 9, 9, 6, 5, 11, 6, 5, 9, 9, 8, 6, 9, 7, 9, 8, 4, 7, 8, 7, 6, 10, 4, 8

In order to make sense of this information, you need to find a way to organize the data. In our
example above, the number of hours each week serves as the categories and the occurrences
of each number are then tallied.

The above information could be presented in a table:

Hours of SleepTallyFrequency
4 ||| 3

5 ||| 3

6 |||| 4

7 ||||| 5

8 ||||| 5

9 ||||| | 7

10 || 2

11 | 1

Looking at the table, you can quickly see that 7 people reported sleeping for 9 hours while only 3
people reported sleeping for 4 hours.

How Are Frequency Distributions

Displayed?
Using the information from a frequency distribution, researchers can then calculate
the mean, median, mode, range and standard deviation. Frequency distributions are often
displayed in a table format, but they can also be presented graphically using a histogram.
Frequency distributions are a helpful way of presenting complex data. In psychology
research, a frequency distribution might be utilized to take a closer look at the meaning
behind numbers. For example, imagine that a psychologist was interested in looking at how
test anxiety impacted grades.

Rather than simply looking at a huge number of test scores, the researcher might compile the
data into a frequency distribution which can then be easily converted into a bar graph. By
doing this, the researcher can then quickly look at important things such as the range of
scores as well as which scores occurred the most and least frequently. 

Parameters and Statistics

When describing data, it is necessary to
distinguish whether the data come from a
population or a sample.
 
Typically, every population parameter has a
corresponding sample statistic.
- Parameter—a value that describes a
population
- Statistic—a value that describes a sample
 
Descriptive Statistics
- techniques used to summarize,
organize, and simplify data
- can't look at it all - get a quick, good
impression
Inferential Statistics
-  techniques used to study samples and
then make generalizations about the
populations from which they were
selected