E370

5/13/17
Sampling, Classifying
and Graphing Data to
get information.
Week 2, Part 2:
Classifying
Put your data in an ordered array.
Reduce the bulk of the data by
sorting and creating summary
tables.
regardless
of data type they are all
composed of
classes or categories
frequency
quantitative data frequency
distribution
qualitative data summary table

Begin by Organizing Data

 Classes are categories, which is obvious
for categorical data, but not so obvious
for numerical data.
All sets of classes and categories must be
Mutually exclusive and
Collectively exhaustive

Consider eye color

Good categories are blue, green, hazel, brown,
black.
You may NOT have blue, green, blue or green,
etc.
You may NOT have just blue & brown.

What are classes?

 Classes for numerical
variables all have
class intervals
We would like them all the same.
class limits
Lower and upper limiting values
Open or closed?
class mark
Just the midpoint, the average of
the limits.
What about numerical variables?
 Frequencies
absolute frequencya count of the
observations that fit in the class.
relative frequencythe absolute frequency
divided by the total number of
observations.
cumulative (absolute) frequencythe
absolute frequency from a class PLUS the
sum of all the absolute frequencies in
previous classes.
cumulative relative frequencysame as
above, but the frequencies are divided by
the total number of observations.

What goes into classes?