Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
2013
WWW.EDHOLE.COM
Mode ...........................................................................................................................................10
Classification of Data
The process of arranging data into homogenous group or classes according to some common
characteristics
present
in
the
data
is
called
classification.
For Example: The process of sorting letters in apost office, the letters are classified according to
the cities and further arranged according to streets.
Bases of Classification:
There are four important bases of classification:
(1) Qualitative Base (2) Quantitative Base (3)Geographical Base (4) Chronological or
Temporal Base
(1) Qualitative Base:
When the data are classified according to some quality or attributes such as sex, religion,
literacy, intelligence etc
(2) Quantitative Base:
When the data are classified by quantitative characteristics like heights, weights, ages,
income etc
(3) Geographical Base:
When the data are classified by geographical regions or location, like states, provinces,
cities, countries etc
(4) Chronological or Temporal Base:
When the data are classified or arranged by their time of occurrence, such as years,
months, weeks, days etc For Example: Time series data.
Types of Classification:
(1) One -way Classification:
If we classify observed data keeping in view single characteristic, this type of
classification is known as one-way classification.
For Example: The population of world may be classified by religion as Muslim, Christians
etc
(2) Two -way Classification:
If we consider two characteristics at a time in order to classify the observed data then we
are doing two way classifications.
For Example: The population of world may be classified by Religion and Sex.
Also: pie charts, dot plots, stem-and-leaf plots, box plots, etc.
Histogram
A pictorial method for representing frequency data
Find range.
For given frequency table, close any open intervals with sensible limits.
Label each axis carefully; frequency or frequency density usually shown vertically.
Horizontal axis shows value at interval centre for discrete data, at interval limits for
continuous data.
N.B. Areas proportional to frequency so if width is double then halve height for same frequency.
Frequency polygon
Join up the mid-points of the top of each column. At extremes join to x-axis half an interval
width away. Same area as the histogram
Example
Mileages recorded for a sample of your hired vehicles during a given week yielded the following
data:
138
146
168
146
161
164
158
126
183
145
150
140
138
105
135
132
109
186
108
142
144
136
163
135
150
125
148
109
153
156
149
152
154
140
145
157
144
165
135
128
Min. = 105
Max. = 186
Range = 186 - 105 = 81
Nine intervals of 10 miles width reasonable; extreme intervals may be wider;
may be smaller if block very high.
Next produce a frequency distribution table.
Frequency distribution table
Class Interval
100 & less than
110 & less than
120 & less than
130 & less than
140 & less than
150 & less than
160 & less than
Tally
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
||||
Frequency
4
modal interval
Tally
110
120
130 | | |
140
150
160
170
180
190
Frequency
4
||||
0
3
|||| ||
| | | | | | | | | 11
|||| |||
||||
7
8
5
0
2
||
Total 40
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
&
&
&
&
&
&
&
&
&
less than
less than
less than
less than
less than
less than
less than
less than
less than
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
180
190
4
0
3
7
11
8
5
0
2
2.0
3.0
7.0
11.0
8.0
5.0
1.0
Total 40
Method
Construct a frequency table as before.
Construct a cumulative frequency table.
Calculate the cumulative percentages.
Plot the cumulative percentage on the vertical axis against the end of the interval and join up
the points with straight lines.
0.0
10.0
17.5
Freq. Cum.Freq.
0
4
3
7
11
8
% Cum. Freq.
0
4
7
14
25
33
0.0
10.0
17.5
35.0
62.5
82.5
170
190
5
2
38
40
95.0
100.0
40
Mean (Arithmetic)
The mean (or average) is the most popular and well known measure of central tendency. It can
be used with both discrete and continuous data, although its use is most often with continuous
data (see our Types of Variable guide for data types). The mean is equal to the sum of all the
values in the data set divided by the number of values in the data set. So, if we have n values in a
data set and they have values x 1 , x 2 , ..., x n , the sample mean, usually denoted by (pronounced
x bar), is:
This formula is usually written in a slightly different manner using the Greek capitol letter,
pronounced "sigma", which means "sum of...":
You may have noticed that the above formula refers to the sample mean. So, why have we called
it a sample mean? This is because, in statistics, samples and populations have very different
meanings and these differences are very important, even if, in the case of the mean, they are
calculated in the same way. To acknowledge that we are calculating the population mean and not
the sample mean, we use the Greek lower case letter "mu", denoted as :
The mean is essentially a model of your data set. It is the value that is most common. You will
notice, however, that the mean is not often one of the actual values that you have observed in
your data set. However, one of its important properties is that it minimises error in the prediction
of any one value in your data set. That is, it is the value that produces the lowest amount of error
from all other values in the data set.
An important property of the mean is that it includes every value in your data set as part of the
calculation. In addition, the mean is the only measure of central tendency where the sum of the
deviations of each value from the mean is always zero.
1
15k
2
18k
3
16k
4
14k
5
15k
6
15k
7
12k
8
17k
9
90k
10
95k
The mean salary for these ten staff is $30.7k. However, inspecting the raw data suggests that this
mean value might not be the best way to accurately reflect the typical salary of a worker, as most
workers have salaries in the $12k to 18k range. The mean is being skewed by the two large
salaries. Therefore, in this situation, we would like to have a better measure of central tendency.
As we will find out later, taking the median would be a better measure of central tendency in this
situation.
Another time when we usually prefer the median over the mean (or mode) is when our data is
skewed (i.e., the frequency distribution for our data is skewed). If we consider the normal
distribution - as this is the most frequently assessed in statistics - when the data is perfectly
normal, the mean, median and mode are identical. Moreover, they all represent the most typical
value in the data set. However, as the data becomes skewed the mean loses its ability to provide
the best central location for the data because the skewed data is dragging it away from the typical
value. However, the median best retains this position and is not as strongly influenced by the
skewed values. This is explained in more detail in the skewed distribution section later in this
guide.
Median
The median is the middle score for a set of data that has been arranged in order of magnitude.
The median is less affected by outliers and skewed data. In order to calculate the median,
suppose we have the data below:
65
55
89
56
35
14
56
55
87
45
92
We first need to rearrange that data into order of magnitude (smallest first):
14
35
45
55
55
56
56
65
87
89
92
Our median mark is the middle mark - in this case, 56 (highlighted in bold). It is the middle mark
because there are 5 scores before it and 5 scores after it. This works fine when you have an odd
number of scores, but what happens when you have an even number of scores? What if you had
only 10 scores? Well, you simply have to take the middle two scores and average the result. So,
if we look at the example below:
65
55
89
56
35
14
56
55
87
45
35
45
55
55
56
56
65
87
89
92
Only now we have to take the 5th and 6th score in our data set and average them to get a median
of 55.5.
Mode
The mode is the most frequent score in our data set. On a histogram it represents the highest bar
in a bar chart or histogram. You can, therefore, sometimes consider the mode as being the most
popular option. An example of a mode is presented below:
Normally, the mode is used for categorical data where we wish to know which the most common
category, as illustrated below is:
We can see above that the most common form of transport, in this particular data set, is the bus.
However, one of the problems with the mode is that it is not unique, so it leaves us with
problems when we have two or more values that share the highest frequency, such as below:
We are now stuck as to which mode best describes the central tendency of the data. This is
particularly problematic when we have continuous data because we are more likely not to have
any one value that is more frequent than the other. For example, consider measuring 30 peoples'
weight (to the nearest 0.1 kg). How likely is it that we will find two or more people
with exactly the same weight (e.g., 67.4 kg)? The answer, is probably very unlikely - many
people might be close, but with such a small sample (30 people) and a large range of possible
weights, you are unlikely to find two people with exactly the same weight; that is, to the nearest
0.1 kg. This is why the mode is very rarely used with continuous data.
Another problem with the mode is that it will not provide us with a very good measure of central
tendency when the most common mark is far away from the rest of the data in the data set, as
depicted in the diagram below:
In the above diagram the mode has a value of 2. We can clearly see, however, that the mode is
not representative of the data, which is mostly concentrated around the 20 to 30 value range. To
use the mode to describe the central tendency of this data set would be misleading.
Range
The range is the simplest measure of dispersion. The range can be thought of in two ways.
1. As a quantity: the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution.
{ 2, 3, 1, 1, 0, 5, 3, 1, 2, 7, 4, 0, 2, 1, 2,
1, 6, 3, 2, 0, 0, 7, 4, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 5, 12,
4, 2, 0, 5, 3, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 8, 2, 1, 2 }
An outlier is an extreme score, i.e., an infrequently occurring score at either tail of the
distribution. Range is determined by the furthest outliers at either end of the distribution. Range
is of limited use as a measure of dispersion, because it reflects information about extreme values
but not necessarily about "typical" values. Only when the range is "narrow" (meaning that there
are no outliers) does it tell us about typical values in the data.
Quartile Finder
Find the quartile scores for the following distribution. (See instructions appearing below the
histogram).
The divisions you have just performed illustrate quartile scores. Two other percentile scores
commonly used to describe the dispersion in a distribution are decile and quintile scores which
divide cases into equal sized subsets of tenths (10%) and fifths (20%), respectively. In theory,
percentile scores divide a distribution into 100 equal sized groups. In practice this may not be
possible because the number of cases may be under 100.
A box plot is an effective visual representation of both central tendency and dispersion. It
simultaneously shows the 25th, 50th (median), and 75th percentile scores, along with the
minimum and maximum scores. The "box" of the box plot shows the middle or "most typical"
50% of the values, while the "whiskers" of the box plot show the more extreme values. The
length of the whiskers indicates visually how extreme the outliers are.
Below is the box plot for the distribution you just separated into quartiles. The boundaries of the
box plots "box" line up with the columns for the quartile scores on the histogram. The box plot
displays the median score and shows the range of the distribution as well.
The standard deviation is simply the square root of the variance. In some sense, taking the square
root of the variance "undoes" the squaring of the differences that we did when we calculated the
variance.
Variance and standard deviation of a population are designated by
and
, respectively.
2
Variance and standard deviation of a sample are designated by s and s, respectively.
Variance
Standard Deviation
Population
Sample
In these equations,
is the population mean,
is the sample mean, N is the total number of
scores in the population, and n is the number of scores in the sample.
this expression.[12] The function (u) satisfies -1 (u) 1 and is well defined without requiring
the existence of any moments of the distribution.[12]
Galton's measure of skewness[13] is (u) evaluated at u = 3 / 4. Other names for this same
quantity are the Bowley Skewness,[14] the Yule-Kendall index[15] and the quartile skewness.
Kelley's measure of skewness uses u = 0.1.[citation needed]
L-moments
Use of L-moments in place of moments provides a measure of skewness known as the Lskewness.[16]
Cyhelsk's skewness coefficient
An alternative skewness coefficient may be derived from the sample mean and the individual
observations:[17]
a = ( number of observations below the mean - number of observations above the mean ) / total
number of observations
The distribution of the skewness coefficient a in large sample sizes (45) approaches that of a
normal distribution. If the variates have a normal or a uniform distribution the distribution of a is
the same. The behavior of a when the variates have other distributions is currently unknown.
Although this measure of skewness is very intuitive, an analytic approach to its distribution has
proven difficult.
Distance skewness
A value of skewness equal to zero does not imply that the probability distribution is symmetric.
Thus there is a need for another measure of asymmetry which has this property: such a measure
was introduced in 2000.[18] It is called distance skewness and denoted by dSkew. If X is a
random variable which takes values in the d-dimensional Euclidean space, X has finite
expectation, X' is an independent identically distributed copy of X and
the Euclidean space then a simple measure of asymmetry is
Where is the mean, is the median, || is the absolute value and E() is the expectation operato