FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS(SPSS)

-MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY

-MEASURES OF DISPERSION

BY: MS. TRIPTA RANI

 MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCIES
• Three measures of the center of a distribution are commonly used: mean, median, and mode. Any of
them can be used with normally distributed data.
• Mean. The arithmetic average or mean takes into account all of the available information in
computing the central tendency of a frequency distribution. Thus, it is usually the statistic of choice,
assuming that the data are normally distributed data. The mean is computed by adding up all the raw
scores and dividing by the number of scores (M = ZX/N).
• Median. The middle score or median is the appropriate measure of central tendency for ordinal level
raw data. The median is a better measure of central tendency than the mean when the frequency
distribution is skewed.
• Mode. The mode is simply the score that occurs most frequently in the data set. The most common
category, or mode can be used with any kind of data but generally provides the least precise
information about central tendency. Moreover, if one's data are continuous, there often are multiple
modes, none of which truly represents the "typical" score. In fact if there are multiple modes, SPSS
provides only the lowest one. The mode is the tallest bar in a bar graph or histogram.
ANALYZE→DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS→FREQUENCIES→STATISTICS
• The statistics dialog box allows you to select several ways in which a distribution of scores can
be described, such as-
• Measures of central tendency (mean, mode, median),
• Measures of variability (range, standard deviation, variance, quartile splits),
• Measures of shape (kurtosis and skewness).
• To describe the characteristics of the data we should select the mean, mode, median,
standard deviation, variance and range. To check that a distribution is normal, we need to
look at the values of kurtosis and skewness.
NORMAL
DISTRIBUTION
If we drew a vertical line through the
centre of the distribution then it should
look the same on both sides.

This shape basically implies that the

majority of scores lie around the
centre of the distribution (so the
largest bars on the histogram are all
around the central value).
PROPERTIES OF THE NORMAL CURVE
• The normal curve is unimodal (uni=one, modal=mode). It has one "hump," and this hump is in
the middle of the distribution(it is bell shaped). The most frequent value is in the middle.
• 2. The mean, median, and mode are equal.
• 3. The curve is symmetric. If you fold the normal curve in half, the right side would fit perfectly
with the left side; that is, it is not skewed.
• 4. The range is infinite. This means that the extremes approach but never touch the X axis.
• 5. The curve is neither too peaked nor too flat and its tails are neither too short nor too long; it
has no kurtosis.
NON- NORMAL CURVES AND DISTRIBUTION
• There are two main ways in which a distribution can deviate from normal:
• (1) lack of symmetry (called skew) and (2) pointiness (called kurtosis).
• Skewness- If one tail of a frequency distribution is longer than the other, and if the mean and
median are different, the curve is skewed.
• Skewed distributions are not symmetrical and instead the most frequent scores (the tall bars on the graph) are
clustered at one end of the scale.
• So, the typical pattern is a cluster of frequent scores at one end of the scale and the frequency of scores tailing
off towards the other end of the scale.
• A skewed distribution can be either positively skewed (the frequent scores are clustered at the lower end
and the tail points towards the higher or more positive scores) or negatively skewed (the frequent scores
are clustered at the higher end and the tail points towards the lower or more negative scores)
A POSITIVELY (LEFT FIGURE) AND NEGATIVELY
(RIGHT FIGURE) SKEWED DISTRIBUTION

• Curve showing negative skewness Curve showing negative skewness

• In case of negative skewness we have: In case of positive skewness we have:
• X<M<Z Z<M<X
NON- NORMAL CURVES AND DISTRIBUTION
• Distributions also vary in their KURTOSIS. It refers to the degree to which scores cluster at the ends of
the distribution (known as the tails) and how pointy a distribution is.
• A distribution with positive kurtosis has many scores in the tails (a so-called heavy-tailed distribution)
and is pointy. This is known as a leptokurtic distribution.
• In contrast, a distribution with negative kurtosis is relatively thin in the tails (has light tails) and tends to
be flatter than normal. This distribution is called platykurtic.
• Ideally, we want our data to be normally distributed (i.e. not too skewed, and not too many or too few
scores at the extremes!).
• In a normal distribution the values of skew and kurtosis are 0 (i.e. the tails of the distribution are as they
should be).
• If a distribution has values of skew or kurtosis above or below 0 then this indicates a deviation from
normal.
 KURTOSIS
• If a frequency distribution is more peaked than the
normal curve, it is said to have positive kurtosis and
is called leptokurtic and thus there is some positive
kurtosis.
• If the distribution is relatively flat with heavy tails,
it has negative kurtosis and is called platykurtic.
• Although SPSS can easily compute a kurtosis value
for any variable using an option in the Frequencies
command, usually we will not do so because
kurtosis does not seem to affect the results of most
statistical analyses very much.
AREAS UNDER THE NORMAL CURVE

• Approximately 68% of all the values in a normally distributed population lie

within ±1 standard deviation from the mean.
AREAS UNDER THE NORMAL CURVE

• Approximately 95.5% of all the values in a normally distributed population

lie within ±2 standard deviation from the mean.
AREAS UNDER THE NORMAL CURVE

• Approximately 99.7% of all the values in a normally distributed population

lie within ±3 standard deviation from the mean.
 MEASURES OF DISPERSION( VARIABILITY)
• Variability tells us about the spread or dispersion of the scores
• Range (highest minus lowest score) is the crudest measure of variability but does give an indication of the spread in scores .
• The easiest way to look at dispersion is to take the largest score and subtract from it the smallest score. This is known as the range of
scores. For our data, if we order these scores we get 22, 40, 53, 57, 93, 98, 103, 108, 116, 121, 252. The highest score is 252 and the
lowest is 22; therefore, the range is 252 – 22 = 230.

• Standard Deviation. This common measure of variability, is most appropriate when one has normally distributed data,. The
standard deviation is based on the deviation of each score (x) from the mean of all the scores (M). The standard deviation
of sample means is known as the standard error of the mean (SE).
• Interquartile range (IQR) The interquartile range, is to cut off the top and bottom 25% of scores and calculate the range of
the middle 50% of scores – known as the interquartile range., is a very useful measure of variability.
• IQR= Q3-Q1
• Quartiles are the three values that split the sorted data into four equal parts. First we calculate the median, which is also
called the second quartile, which splits our data into two equal parts. We already know that the median for these data is
98. The lower quartile is the median of the lower half of the data and the upper quartile is the median of the upper half of
the data.