DESCRIPTIVE

STATISTICS
Chapter 3
The Histogram
 Review of Design of
Experiments
Studies
Controls No Controls

Contemporaneous Historical

Observational Controlled
Studies Experiment

Randomized Not Randomized

 Grown ups love figures
• When you tell them that you have
made a new friend, they never ask
you about essential matters. They
never say to you: “What does his
voice sound like?” “What games does
he love best?”.
• Instead they demand “How old is he?
How many brothers has he?” “How
much money does his father make?”
– The Little Prince
 How are incomes
distributed in US?
• 50000 families are sampled.
– Nobody wants to look at 50000 numbers
– Graph in a histogram with a density scale

Class interval
 Approximate/Qualitative
Questions
• What percentage of families earned
between $10,000 and $15,000?
• Were there more families with incomes
between $10,000 and $15,000 or
$15,000 and $25,000?

• In a “density scale” histogram, the

areas of the blocks represent

• “percentages”.
 Drawing a Histogram
• Distribution table Income Level Percent

for 1973, US $0-$1000 1

$1,000-$2,000 2
$2,000-$3,000 3
$3,000-$4,000 4
$4,000-$5,000 5
5 $5,000-$6,000 5
$6,000-$7,000 5
7 10 $7,000-$10,000 15
Income (thousand dollars) $10,000-$15,000 26
$15,000-$25,000 26
$25,000-$50,000 8
$50,000 and over 1
 Units on the vertical scale
• Recall this is a “density scale histogram”:
– The vertical scale is percent per thousand
dollars! (Like 48,000 people per kilometer
squared, density…).

Percent per
thousand dollars
 Percent
per
year
The Density Scale
To read off numbers from a histogram, it is
convenient to have a vertical scale:
40

30 The height shows the crowding

20

10

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Educational level (years)
 Where is the crowding?
• Interval from 12-13 years
– High school graduates!
• Interval from 9 to 12 years
– The percent value is 4% per year in this
interval
– These correspond to percentage of
people who started high school, but did
not graduate!
• About (12-9)x4% = 12% of the sample.
 Examples
• Someone sketched a histogram

What is wrong?
 Relative Frequency
Histogram
• Divide measurement up into equal-
sized categories.
• Determine number (or percentage) of
measurements falling into each
category.
• Draw a bar for each category so bars’
heights represent percent falling into
the categories.
• Need a vertical axis!
 Ungrouped Versus
Grouped Data
• Ungrouped data
• have not been summarized in any way
• are also called raw data
• Grouped data
• have been organized into a frequency
distribution
Example of Ungrouped
Data

42 26 32 34 57 Ages of a Sample of
30 58 37 50 30 Managers from
53 40 30 47 49
Urban Child Care
50 40 32 31 40
Centers in the
52 28 23 35 25
United States
30 36 32 26 50

55 30 58 64 52

49 33 43 46 32

61 31 30 40 60

74 37 29 43 54
Frequency Distribution of
Child Care Manager’s Ages
Class Interval Frequency
20-under 30 6
30-under 40 18
40-under 50 11
50-under 60 11
60-under 70 3
70-under 80 1
 Relative Frequency Table
(Same as Distribution Table)
Relative
Class Interval Frequency Frequency
20-under 30 6 .12
30-under 40 18 6
.36 
40-under 50 11 50
.22
50-under 60 11 .22
18

60-under 70 3 .06 50
70-under 80 1 .02
Total 50 1.00
 Frequency Histogram
(Relative Frequency: similar!)

Class Interval

20
Frequency
20-under 30 6

Frequency
30-under 40 18

10
40-under 50 11
50-under 60 11
60-under 70 3
0

70-under 80 1 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Years
 Ex. Too few categories
Age of Spring 1998 Stat201
2005 Math 250 Students

60
Frequency (C ount)

50

40

30

20

10

18 23 28
Age (in years)
n=92 students
Ex. Too many categories
GPAs of Spring 1998 Stat 201
2005 Math 250 Students

6
Frequency (Count)

2 3 4
GPA
n=92 students
 Variables
Qualitative Quantitative

Discrete Continuous

• Questions answered by giving a

number: Variables in the question are
quantitative! Ex. Age, family size.
• Questions may have qualitative
• answers! Ex. Do you have a job?
 Controlling for a variable
Any side effects of the birth control pill?

--- Nonusers shifted

to the right by 5 mm

Users
 Cross Tabulation
(Some investigators prefer tabular form!)
 Selective Breeding
• Psychology experiment on rats in a
maze
• Intelligence score: total number of
errors it made through the maze.
 Breeding in order to form
“maze-bright” rats genetically

• Tyron’s “bright” rats were used in other

experiments:
• No good at other intelligence tests
• Unsociable introverts!