Quantitative Data Analysis

Sarah.kennedy.2009@nuim.ie
Sarahkennedytutorials.blogspot.com
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Graphs
BAR CHART

HISTOGRAM

Graphs:
Frequency Polygon

Central Tendency
Central Tendency:
The value around which case tend to
center.

Mean: the mathematical average

Median: The point that divides a
distribution in half the middle point
Mode: The most frequent value in a
distribution the most common
answer.

When studying the staff at a bakery, you discover there are:

10 bakers
5 cashiers
5 office staff
1 proprietor
The bakers are each paid 32,000 per year. Each cashier earns
25,000 per year. The office staff each earn 30,000 per year. The proprietor,
eventually, when the door is closed and there is nobody else in the room, admits
to taking an annual salary of 400,000.
What is the mean salary at the bakery?
What is the median salary?
What is the mode?
Lastly, lets suppose you wanted to survey the bakers, cashiers and office staff on
what they thought about the boss.
If you selected 5 staff by simple random sampling from all 20 of the staff (thats
everyone who works at the bakery except for the proprietor),
what is the probability of any particular member of staff being selected?
What if you picked 2 staff from each group 2 bakers, 2 cashiers and 2 office
staff? What is the probability of any particular baker being selected? And what
is the probability of any particular cashier being selected?
What type of sampling is this?

Measures of Variation
Range:
The difference between the highest and lowest value, plus one.

Variance:
Takes in to account the amount by which each case differs from the
mean.

Standard Deviation:
The average distance from the mean tells you how spread out your
results are.
Consider sports teams. In any sport, there will be teams that are good at some
things and not at others. The teams that are ranked highest will not show a lot of
differences in abilities. They do well in most categories. The lower the standard
deviation of their ability in each category, the more balanced and consistent they
are. Teams with a higher standard deviation, however, will be less predictable. For
example, a team that is usually bad in most categories will have a low standard
deviation. A team that is usually good in most categories will also have a low
standard deviation. However, a team with a high standard deviation might be the
type of team that scores many points(strong offense) but also lets the other team
score many points(weak defense).