Statistics

MODULE 9: Summary Measures and Graphs

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the module, you are expected to exhibit the following competencies:
1. Recognise the concepts of summary measures and graphs.
2. Provide simple analysis of a data set based on its descriptive measures.
3. Construct and interpret box plots.

IMPORTANT CONCEPTS

Introduction:

The BMI, devised by Adolphe Quetelet, is defined as the body mass divided by the square of the body height,
and is universally expressed in units of kg/m2 , using weight in kilograms and height in meters. When the term
BMI is used informally, the units are usually omitted. A high BMI can be an indicator of high body fatness. The
BMI can be used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.

The BMI provides a simple numeric measure of a person's thickness or thinness, allowing medical and health
professionals to discuss weight problems more objectively with the adult patients. The standard weight status
categories associated with BMI ranges for adults are listed below:

For adults, a BMI from 18.5 up to 23 indicates optimal weight, while a BMI lower than 18.5 suggests that the
person is underweight, a number from 23 up to 30 indicates that the person is overweight, and a number from
30 upwards suggests the person is obese. Note that the threshold 23 and 27.5 are used for South East Asians, as
per suggestion of the World Health Organization (WHO), though generally 25 and 30 are used.

Special Notes about interpreting BMI:

1. Many but not all athletes have a high muscle to fat ratio and may have a BMI that is misleadingly high
relative to their body fat percentage. Exceptions also can be made for the elderly, and the infirm.

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2. For children and teens, the interpretation of BMI depends upon age and sex, even though it is computed
using the same formula. This difference in interpretation is due to the variability in the amount of body fat
with age and between girls and boys, among children and teens. Instead of comparison against fixed
thresholds for underweight and overweight, the BMI is compared against the percentile for children of the
same gender and age. A BMI that is less than the 5th percentile is considered underweight and above the
95th percentile is considered obese. Children with a BMI between the 85th and 95th percentile are
considered to be overweight.
3. The following are other limitations in the interpretation of BMI.
a.Since the BMI depends upon weight and the square of height, it ignores the basic scaling law which states
that mass increases to the 3rd power of linear dimensions. Thus, taller individuals, even if they had
exactly the same body shape and relative composition, always have a larger BMI
b. BMI also does not account for body frame size; a person may have a small frame and be carrying more
fat than optimal, but the BMI may suggest that these people are normal. Alarge framed individual may
be quite healthy with a fairly low body fat percentage, but the BMI may yield an overweight
classification.

In the Philippines, the government’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) of the Department of Science
and Technology collects the anthropometric data through the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) to be able to
generate estimates on the extent of child malnutrition using three indicators of undernutrition: underweight,
wasted and stunted. The NNS is conducted every five years and based on the gathered weights and heights, the
nutritional status of the Filipinos was assessed.

For a Filipino child whose weight is below three standard deviations from the median weight-for-age, the child is
said to be severely underweight, while if the weight is lower than two standard deviations from the growth
standard but higher than three standard deviations, then the child is moderately underweight. Similarly,
(moderate and severe) wasting and stunting are respectively, defined in terms of the child growth standards on
weight-for-height and height-for-age, respectively. Using these standards, FNRI estimates based on the 2013
NNS about one in five children aged 0 to 5 years were underweight, about three in ten had stunted growth.
Wasting—or low weight-forheight—was estimated at 7.9 percent.

It was also reported that incidents of malnutrition were high among those under the poorest 20 percent of
families: underweight (29.8 percent), stunting (44.8 percent), and wasting (9.5 percent). Malnutrition is thus
related to poverty. The percentage of overweight children was highest among the "wealthiest" (10.7 percent).
The figure below shows the trends in the prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting from 1989 to 2013
based on the data gathered by FNRI through its NNS.

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When children under five are experiencing malnutrition, they are likely to carry this over to early childhood,
which has repercussions on learning achievements in school. In consequence, government, through the
Department of Social Welfare and Development, as well as the Department of Education (DepED), has
developed feeding programs to reduce hunger, to aid in the development of children, to improve nutritional
status and to promoting good health, as well as to reduce inequities by encouraging families to send their
children to school given the incentive of school feeding benefits. DepED thus regularly collects school records of
heights and weights at the beginning and end of the school year to monitor nutrition of school-aged children.

The following table provides a sample data:

Class Student Number Sex Height (in Weight BMI
meters) (in kilograms) (rounded off to whole numbers.
1 F 1.64 40 15
2 F 1.52 50 22
3 F 1.52 49 21
4 F 1.65 45 17
5 F 1.02 60 58
6 F 1.63 45 17
7 F 1.50 38 17
8 F 1.60 51 20
9 F 1.42 42 21
10 F 1.52 54 23
11 F 1.48 46 21
12 F 1.62 54 21
13 F 1.50 36 16
14 F 1.54 50 21
15 F 1.67 63 23
16 M 1.72 55 19
17 M 1.65 61 22
18 M 1.56 60 25
19 M 1.50 52 23
20 M 1.70 90 31
21 M 1.53 50 21
22 M 1.62 90 34
23 M 1.79 80 25
24 M 1.57 58 24
25 M 1.70 68 24
26 M 1.77 27 9
27 M 1.48 50 23
28 M 1.73 94 31
29 M 1.56 66 27
30 M 1.75 50 16

Compute the descriptive measures for the whole class and also for each subgroup in the data set with sex as the
grouping variable. The descriptive measures to compute include the measures of location such as minimum,
maximum,mean, median, first and third quartiles; and measures of dispersion such the range, interquartile range
(IQR) and standard deviation. Each group could use the following format of the table to present the computed
measures:

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The following tables provide the descriptive measures of the sample class data as a whole and by subgroup. Note
that there might be discrepancies in the computed values due to rounding off.

Possible textual presentation of the data on heights:

Based on Table 9.2, on the average, a student of this class is 1.582 meters high. The shortest student is just a little
bit over one meter while the tallest is 1.79 meters high resulting to a range of 0.77 meter. The median which is
1.585 is almost the same as the mean height.

Comparing the males and female students, on the average male students are taller than female students but the
dispersion of the heights of the female students is wider compared to that of the male students. Thus, male
students of this class tend to be of same heights compared to female students.

Table 9.3 Summary statistics of the variable weight (in kilograms) using the sample data.

Possible textual presentation of the data on weights:

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Using the statistics on Table 9.3, on the average, a student of this class weighs 55.8 kilograms. The minimum
weight of the students in this class is only 27 kilograms while the heaviest student of this class is 94 kilograms.
There is a wide variation among the values of the weights of the students in this class as measured by the range
which is equal to 67 kilograms. The median weight for this class is 51.5 kilograms which is quite different from the
mean as the value of the latter was pulled by the presence of extreme values.

Comparing the males and female students, on the average male students are heavier than female students. The
extreme values observed for the class are both coming from male students. The wide variation observed on the
students’ weights of this class was also observed among the weights of the male students. In fact, the standard
deviation of the weights of the male students is more than double the standard deviation of the weights of
female students.

Possible textual presentation of the data on BMIs:

Table 9.4 shows that the minimum BMI of the students in the class is 9 while the maximum is 58 kg/m2 . On the
average, a student of this class has a BMI of 22.9. Also, the median BMI for this class is 21.5 which is near the
value of the mean BMI. The variability of the values is also not that large as a small standard error value of 8.3
was obtained.

Comparing the males and female students, on the average, the BMI of the male and female students are near
each other with numerical values equal to 23.6 and 22.2, respectively. But there is a wider variation among the
BMI values of the female students compared to that of the male students. The standard deviation of the BMIs of
the male students is less than that of the female students.

Visual comparison of the data distributions between two or among several groups could be achieved through
box-plots. You may ask the students if they already know how to construct a box-plot. If so, you may just review
the steps with them. Otherwise, you may briefly discuss the steps in constructing box-plot as given in the next
section before you ask them to construct box-plots for their respective data sets.

Construction of a Box-Plot

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Using five summary statistics, namely: minimum, maximum, median, first and third quartiles, a box-plot can be
constructed as follows:

1. Draw a rectangular box (horizontally or vertically) with the first and third quartiles as the endpoints. Thus the
width of the box is given by the IQR which is the difference between the third and first quartiles.

2. Locate the median inside the box and identify it with a line segment.

3. Compute for 1.5 IQR. Use this value to identify markers. These markers are used to identify outliers. The
lowest marker is given by Q1 – 1.5IQR while the highest marker is Q3+ 1.5IQR.Values outside these markers
are said to be outliers and could be represented by a solid circle.

4. One of the two whiskers of the box-plot is a line segment joining the side of the box representing Q1 and the
minimum while the other whisker is a line segment joining Q3 and the maximum. This is for the case when
the minimum and maximum are not outliers. In the case that there are outliers, the whiskers will only be line
segments from the side of box and its corresponding marker.

A box-plot is also called box-and-whiskers plot and it could easily be generated using a statistical software.
Comparison of data distributions could easily be done visually using this kind of plots. Likewise, in technical
papers or reports, a box-plot is an accepted graphical presentation of data distribution.

Using the sample class data, the following figures provide the box-plots for the variables heights, weights and BMI
by sex of the student. The said figures confirm what were stated in the textual presentation.

We could also note that in Figure 9.1, the distribution of heights for the girls has a larger range because of an
outlier as represented by a solid circle given on the plot. The distribution of the girls’ heights has smaller median
compared to the male distribution.

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For the variable weights, females have a lower median weight than males, as well as less variability. The middle
50% of the female weight distribution is also observed to be contained within the range of the male weight data.

As for the variable BMI, females

have a lower median BMI and lower variability compared to those of males. There is, at least extremely obese
female, and one is severely underweight male.

With the computed descriptive statistics and corresponding box-plot(s), the analysis or textual presentation could
be further improved by describing data not only in terms of the measures but also in terms of the interpretation
of box plots.

PRACTICE SKILLS

1. In a university the grading scale that is used for a subject are as follows: 1.0; 1.25; 1.5; 1.75; 2.0; 2.25; 2.5;
2.75; 3.0; 4.0; and 5.0 Grades from 1.0 to 3.0 are passing grades with 1.0 as the highest possible grade. The
grade of 5.0 is failing while 4.0 is a conditional grade. At the end of the semester, the general weighted
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average (GWA) of the students are computed and students with high GWAs are usually recognized. Below is a
table showing the GWA and sex of thirty students who are to be recognized in a program for having high
GWAs.

Use the approaches below to compare the academic performance of male and female students in the previous
term.

1. Compute for the descriptive measures which include the measures of location such as minimum, maximum,
mean, median, first and third quartiles; and measures of dispersion such the range, interquartile range (IQR)
and standard deviation by sex.
2. Using the computed descriptive statistics, compare the two distributions in terms of their measures of
location and measures of dispersions. On the average, which group of students perform better academically
in the previous term? Which group varies more?
3. Sort the data within each group then determine what proportion in each group is within one standard
deviation of that group's mean. Are the proportions similar?
4. Construct box-plots of the GWAs for the males and females. Compare the two data distributions of GWAs.

REFERENCES

Albert, J. R. G. (2008). Basic Statistics for the Tertiary Level (ed. Roberto Padua, WelfredoPatungan, Nelia
Marquez), published by Rex Bookstore.
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“Armspans” inSTatistics Education Web (STEW) http://www.amstat.org/education/stew/pdfs/Armspans.docx

“Deciding Which Measure of Center to Use” http://www.sharemylesson.com/teachingresource/deciding-which-

measure-of-center-to-use-50013703/

Handbook of Statistics 1 (1st and 2nd Edition), Authored by the Faculty of the Institute of Statistics, UP Los Baños,
College Laguna 4031

Workbooks in Statistics 1 (From 1st to 13th Edition), Authored by the Faculty of the Institute of Statistics, UP Los
Baños, College Laguna 4031

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