Course Description

Module 8: Measures of Central Tendency

Topic 1: Preparing Frequency Distribution Table
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Learning Outcomes

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

a. define a frequency distribution table;
b. organize data by constructing a frequency distribution table for grouped and ungrouped
data; and
c. express appreciation on the importance of frequency distribution table.
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Learning Content

What is a Frequency Distribution Table?

Frequency tells you how often something happened. The frequency of an observation tells you
the number of times the observation occurs in the data. For example, in the following list of
numbers, the frequency of the number 9 is 5 (because it occurs 5 times):
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 9, 8, 5, 1, 1, 9, 9, 0, 6, 9.
Tables can show either categorical variables (sometimes called qualitative variables)
or quantitative variables (sometimes called numeric variables). You can think of categorical
variables as categories (like eye color or brand of dog food) and quantitative variables as numbers.
A frequency distribution is a table that gives the number of times that each value in a data
set occurs. It tells us how the frequencies are distributed in our data set.

What Is Grouped and Ungrouped Data?

Before we understand the grouped and ungrouped frequency distribution, we need to

understand what grouped and ungrouped data is.
In simple terms, ungrouped data is raw data that has not been placed in any category. This
implies that the data is not given any characteristics. For example, you know that 350 people are
living in your area. This is raw data and is not grouped, i.e. divided into any category.
The moment this raw data is categorized, it becomes grouped data. For example, there are
50 children and 300 adults. This data is now organized as you have clear information about the
number of children and adults present in your locality.
However, this data can further be classified according to the requirement.

A. Ungrouped Frequency Distribution

In this module, we’re going to look at two examples of ungrouped frequency distributions.
In our first example, we will be constructing a frequency distribution of qualitative data.
And for our second example, we’re going to be interpreting or reading from a frequency
distribution for quantitative data.

Example 1:
Thirty students were asked whether they lived on campus, lived with their parents, rented
an apartment, owned their own home, or had some other living apartment. The results of
this survey are presented in the list below:
campus parents parents own campus rent
parents campus parents parents campus rent
own parents other campus own parents
parents parents campus rent parents parents
parents parents campus parents parents rent
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Housing Type Frequency

In this case, we asked students what type of housing they have. So, at first column is going to be
the housing type. The second column is going to be the frequency because we are going to measure
the frequency of each type of housing. Notice that the table has 5 rows because there are 5 different
types of housing. Students could live on campus, they could live with their parents, they could
own their own home, they could rent an apartment, or they could have some other living
arrangement.
So, next thing to do is to list those 5 different housing types in that first column.

Housing Type Frequency

Campus 7
Parents 15
Rent 4
Own 3
Other 1
The next task is to fill in the frequency column. There are couple of ways that you can go
about it. For example, you could look through your data and just simply count up how many
times the word “campus” appears and put that number in the frequency column and then you
could go through your data set a second time and count how many times “parents” appear and
then how many times “rent” occurs and so on and so forth. This technique is pretty good if you
have a small data set. In this case, 30 values in the data set is a pretty manageable way do that.

But just to show you some other options, you may use another technique in this
frequency distribution. To construct a frequency distribution for this example, you may also use
tally marks. Tally marks are often used to make a frequency distribution table.
Steps:
To make the frequency distribution table, first write the categories in one column (housing
types):

Housing Type Tally Frequency

Campus
Parents
Rent
Own
Other

Next, tally the numbers in each category (from the results above). For example, the housing
type “rent” appears four times in the list, so put four tally marks “||||”:
Rent IIII
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Finally, count up the tally marks and write the frequency in the final column. The frequency is
just the total. You have four tally marks for “rent”, so put 4 in the last column:
Housing Type Tally Frequency
Campus IIIII-II 7
Parents IIIII-IIIII-IIIII 15 Commented [Pj1]: Note: The tally mark with 4 vertical
Rent IIII 4
Own III 3 lines and one diagonal line cannot be encoded in
Other I 1 my MS word that’s why I just put IIIII for 5 tally marks.
Total: 30
A frequency distribution table showing categorical variables (qualitative variables)

To check whether you included the correct number of items, add all the frequencies together and
you should get your sample size. Since 30 students were surveyed, you should have a total number
of frequencies of 30.

Example 2:
For example, let’s say you survey a number of households and find out how many pets they
own. The results are 3, 0, 1, 4, 4, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3. Looking at that string of
numbers boggles the eye; a frequency distribution table will make the data easier to understand.

Steps
To make the frequency distribution table, first write the categories in one column (number of
pets):

Next, tally the numbers in each category (from the results above). For example, the number zero
appears four times in the list, so put four tally marks “||||”:
0 IIII

Finally, count up the tally marks and write the frequency in the final column. The frequency is
just the total. You have four tally marks for “0”, so put 4 in the last column:

A frequency distribution table showing numeric variables (quantitative variables)

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B. Grouped Frequency Distribution
The grouped frequency table is a statistic method to organize and simplify a large set of
data in to smaller "groups." When a data consists of hundreds of values, it is preferable to
group them into smaller chunks to make it more understandable. When grouped frequency
table is created, scientists and statistician can observe interesting trends in the data.
The main purpose of the grouped frequency table is to find out how often each value
occurred within each group of the entire data. The group frequency distribution is essentially
a table with two columns. The first column titled "Groups" represents all possible "grouping"
of the data and the second column titled "Frequency" represents how frequent each value
occurred within each group.
Steps in Constructing a Frequency Distribution Table
1. Arrange the data from lowest to highest.
2. Determine the range by getting the difference between the highest and lowest value in
the set of data.
3. Determine the number of class intervals or categories desired (the ideal number of class
intervals is somewhere between 5 and 15).

4. Determine the approximate size of class interval by dividing the range by the desired
number of class intervals.
5. Construct the frequency distribution table.

Example:
Mr. Bangao was asked to present the performance of his GEC 3 class in the midterm
exam. The following are the test scores of his class:
34 42 20 50 17 9 34 43
50 18 35 43 50 23 23 35
37 38 38 39 39 38 38 39
24 29 25 26 28 27 44 44
49 48 46 45 45 46 45 46
N=40

Solution: Let us now follow the steps in constructing a frequency distribution table.
Step 1: Arrange the data from lowest to highest.

9 23 28 35 38 43 45 48
17 24 29 37 39 43 45 49
18 25 34 38 39 44 46 50
20 26 34 38 39 44 46 50
23 27 35 38 42 45 46 50

Step 2: Determine the range by getting the difference between the highest and lowest value
in the set of data.
This the reason why we arranged the set of data in Step 1 for us to easily identify the lowest
and highest value in the data set.

Range (r)= highest value – lowest value

𝑟𝑟 = 50 − 9
𝑟𝑟 = 41
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Step 3: Determine the number of class intervals or categories desired (the ideal number of
class intervals is somewhere between 5 and 15).

Use the 𝟐𝟐𝒌𝒌 rule to determine the number of classes for a frequency table. This is a great
rule to use when you have lots of different data points and you take on lots of different
values. By using classes, it allows us to group together some of these data values and also
barely look at their frequencies.
Let’s look at this rule more in detail to see exactly how it will help us.
The 𝟐𝟐𝒌𝒌 rule says that 2𝑘𝑘 ≥ 𝑛𝑛
where
• 𝑘𝑘 is the number of classes
• 𝑛𝑛 is the number of data points
According to the 𝟐𝟐𝒌𝒌 rule, it says that 𝟐𝟐𝒌𝒌 must be greater that or equal to 𝑛𝑛. What we usually
end up doing is we take our number of data points (𝑛𝑛) and look for a value of k so that we
can have a number which is 2 raised to k which is greater than or equal to the number of
data points.

In our example, 𝑛𝑛 = 40
𝟐𝟐𝒌𝒌 rule
k 2𝑘𝑘 ≥ 𝑛𝑛
1 21 ≥ 40 FALSE
𝟐𝟐 ≥ 𝟒𝟒𝟒𝟒
2 22 ≥ 40 FALSE
𝟒𝟒 ≥ 𝟒𝟒𝟒𝟒
3 23 ≥ 40 FALSE
𝟖𝟖 ≥ 𝟒𝟒𝟒𝟒
4 24 ≥ 40 FALSE
𝟏𝟏𝟏𝟏 ≥ 𝟒𝟒𝟒𝟒
5 25 ≥ 40 FALSE
𝟑𝟑𝟑𝟑 ≥ 𝟒𝟒𝟒𝟒
6 25 ≥ 40 TRUE
𝟔𝟔𝟔𝟔 ≥ 𝟒𝟒𝟒𝟒
Therefore, the number of classes(k) in our Frequency Distribution Table is 6.

Step 4: Determine the approximate size of class interval by dividing the range by the desired
number of class intervals.
𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟
𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠 (𝑖𝑖) =
𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖
41
𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠 (𝑖𝑖) =
6
𝑐𝑐𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠 (𝑖𝑖) = 6.83 round off
𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠 (𝑖𝑖) = 7
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Step 5: Construct the frequency distribution table.

Lower Class Interval Upper Class Frequency Less than Relative Commented [Pj2]: Class interval actually refers to the
Boundary Boundary Mark Cumulative Frequency groupings in which
Frequency Commented [Pj3]:
LB Lower Upper UB (X) f <cf Rf
limit limit
43.5 44 50 50.5 47 13 40 32.5%
36.5 37 43 43.5 40 11 27 27.5%
29.5 30 36 35.5 33 4 16 10%
22.5 23 29 29.5 26 8 12 20%
15.5 16 22 22.5 19 3 4 7.5%
8.5 9 15 15.5 12 1 1 2.5%
Given:
r=41 C.I= 6 i =7 lowest value= 9 highest value= 50
• Since our class interval is 6, then we will be having 6 classes.
• For the lower limit, start with the lowest value from the data set. Start at the bottom cell of
the lower limit column. To get the suceeding lower limit, just add your class size(i). For
example, 9+7=16; 16+7=23; 23+7=30; and so on and so forth.
• For us to complete the column for the upper limit, again start from the bottom. Since your
class size is 7, then each class should contain 7 values. For example, starting from the
lowest value of the data set—9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Therefore, the upper limit of the first
class is 15. To get the succeeding upper limits, just add your class size(i). For example,
15+7=22; 22+7=29; 29+7=36, and so on.
• To compute for the lower boundary, use the formula LB= lower limit -0.5
• To compute for the upper boundary, use the formula UB= upper limit +0.5
𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢𝑢 𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙+𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙𝑙
• To compute for the class mark, use the formula 𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐𝑐 𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚𝑚 =
2
• The frequency refers to the number of data points that would fall in each class interval. For
example, the frequency of students who earned a score of 9 to 15 is 1; 3 students scored
within the range of 16-22; 8 students obtained a score which falls within 23 to 29, and so
on.
• For the less than cumulative frequency, it is obtained by adding successively the
frequencies of all the previous classes including the class against which it is written. The
cumulate is started from the lowest to the highest size.
𝑓𝑓
• For the relative frequency, use the formula 𝑅𝑅𝑅𝑅 = � � 10
𝑁𝑁
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LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Answer the following.
A. Ungrouped Frequency Distribution

1. Create an Ungrouped Frequency Distribution table with the data from the survey,
accomplished among the students of university, which answered the question of how
many books they read per year. The answers are presented below:

7 3 0 9 8 5 4 4 5 6 6 3 3 4 5 1 0 3

2. Create an Ungrouped Frequency Distribution table with the data from the survey
concerning the age of the people, which attend the gym. The results of a survey are
presented below.

25 30 27 32 22 25 27 24 25 26 26 23 23 24 25 21 20 30

31 25 30 32 21 21 24 25 26 28 30 29 32 19 20 21 25 25

B. Grouped Frequency Distribution

Follow the steps presented in creating a grouped frequency distribution.
1. Construct a frequency distribution for the following weights (in kgs.) of 30 students.
The weights are: 31,41,46, 33, 44, 51, 56, 63, 71, 71, 62, 63, 54, 53, 51, 43, 36, 38,
54, 56, 66, 71, 74, 75, 46, 47, 59, 60, 61, 63.
2. The data below shows the number of COVID-19 cases from 40 countries in the world.
Construct a frequency distribution table.

55 70 57 73 55 59 64 72
60 48 58 54 69 51 63 78
75 64 65 57 71 78 76 62
49 66 62 76 61 63 63 76
52 76 71 61 53 56 67 71
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REFERENCES
https://youtu.be/QI5OZN9t-D0
https://www.onlinemathlearning.com/make-frequency-table.html
https://assignmentshark.com/blog/example-of-ungrouped-frequency-distribution-table/