Collecting and Organizing Data

This section discusses how to collect and organize data by using tables.

Collection of Data
There are many different ways to collect data. Listed below are some common
ones:

1. Previous Information
Search for information from newspapers, magazines, world wide web, etc.
For example, search for the unemployment rates in different months of 2011 from
the DOLE Annual report.
2. Observation
Obtain the required information through direct observation, measurement, or
counting.
For example, we can observe and count the number of passengers travelling by
boat from Zamboanga to Basilan from 9 A.M. to 10:30 A.M.
3. Experiment
Obtain the required information through actual and real experiments.
For example, we can record the number of “heads” in tossing 5 coins.
4. Interview
Obtain the required information through household surveys, street surveys, or even
telephone interviews.
For example, we can get television rating by doing actual interviews.
5. Questionnaire
Obtain the required information from the answers provided in the set of
questionnaires.
For example, we can collect customers’ opinions towards a certain product by using
questionnaires.
Organization of Data
Recall that qualitative data provide non-numerical measures which categorize or
classify an individual. When qualitative data are collected, we are often interested in
determining the number of individuals appearing within each category.
A sample of 48 people were surveyed on the favourite types of television
programs they watched. The responses are recorded in Figure 1.
 The types of television program are the variable in this example. This variable is
classified into six categories such as drama, news, cartoon, sports, variety shows, and
others.
N N D C V C S
O D N D C V N
S D N V D C D
D V N C D N D
C V O N D S N
S C D D D V D
C D N N D N

Figure 1
Legend: D – Drama C- Cartoon S - Sport
N – News V – Variety shows O – Others
We cannot directly get any useful information from the data in Figure 1 because
the data are not organized. To help us organize the data, we use a frequency
distribution table. One method of counting frequency is by tallying. A tally is used to
record the frequency of a particular item. Tallies prepare the frequency. The total
frequency is called sample size.
Table 1 shows the frequency distribution table taken from the survey.

Table 1

Frequency Distribution
A frequency distribution table shows classes or intervals of data entries with a
count of the number of entries in each class. The frequency of a class is the number of
data entries in the class.
Let us consider the following example:
In order to improve the quality of services, a bus company carries out a survey about
the bus services of Rural Transit Corporation. Figure 2 shows the waiting time of 100
passengers (which are rounded off to the nearest minutes).
20 13 20 17 23 15 12 26 20 19
25 5 4 25 16 22 31 8 39 10
21 38 28 21 31 4 18 35 16 14
33 8 13 19 15 12 13 16 22 13
15 19 15 15 20 25 20 26 19 18
37 20 19 14 12 6 17 5 21 25
4 27 12 22 26 31 18 24 31 15
38 35 14 17 18 8 14 9 5 22
12 32 25 5 23 20 23 19 14 25
22 15 28 19 12 25 16 21 32 19
Figure 2
The data collected are distributed extensively. In order to see the trend of the
data, we can group them into classes before making the analysis.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1 Read the data carefully and find the largest and smallest values.
Step 2 Decide the number of classes and the range of each class. They should cover
all the data.
Step 3 Use the tally method to record the number of data in each class.
According to Figure 2, the smallest value of waiting time is 4 minutes and the
largest value is 39 minutes. If we decide that the range of each class is 3 minutes, then
a frequency distribution table can be constructed as follows:
Waiting time (range of each class = 3 minutes)
 Table 2

Since the frequency distribution table shown in Table 2 does not show a
significant trend, the range of each class can be increased to 6 minutes. A new
frequency distribution table is constructed as presented in Table 3.

Waiting time (range of each class = 6 minutes)

Waiting time ( minutes ) Frequency ( f )
4 -9 12
10 -15 23
16 -21 30
22 - 27 20
28 - 33 9
34 - 39 6
Ʃ f = 100

A frequency distribution should have a minimum of 5 classes and a maximum of

20 classes. For a small data set, use between 5 and 10 classes, while for large data
sets, use up to 20 classes.

The terminologies about the frequency table are as follows:

Class intervals are intervals of equal length that cover the range of data between the
minimum and the maximum values without any overlapping.
Class limit is the values at the two ends of each class interval. The smaller value
is the lower class limit and the greater value is the upper class limit.
Class mark is the average of the upper class limit and the lower class limit for
each class of data, that is, (upper class limit + lower class limit) ÷ 2.
Class boundary in each of the data, the minimum possible value is called the lower
class boundary while the maximum possible value is called the upper
class boundary.
Class width is the difference between the upper class boundary and the lower
class boundary for each class of data.

Relative Frequency and Percentage Distribution

Often, rather than being concerned with the frequency where classes of data
occur, we would like to know the relative frequency of the classes.
The relative frequency for a class is the ratio of the number of entries in a class
to the total number of entries that is
Relative frequency for a class:
❑ ❑
(Rf ) = ❑ Frequency of the class /sum of all frequency = ❑ f / ∑ ❑ f

A relative frequency distribution is a listing of all classes and their relative frequency.
The percentage of a class is obtained by multiplying the relative frequency of that class
by 100. A percentage distribution shows the percentage for all classes.

Example: Construct a relative frequency distribution and percentage distribution of the

data in the table below.
Class ( scores ) Frequency ( number of
student )
20 - 39 6
40 - 59 12
60 - 79 4
80 - 99 3
Total 25

Table 4
Solution: We may construct the relative frequency and percentage distribution in
Table 4 (frequency distribution table) by adding two more columns to it.
❑6
Relative frequency = f/Ʃ f = ❑ =0.24
25
Percentage = Relative frequency x 100 = 0.24 x 100 = 24%
 Now, repeat the same steps for the rest of the classes. Therefore, we have
completed the relative frequency and percentage distribution of the data in Table 4.
Relative frequency and percentage distribution of the data in Table 4
Annual Leave Number of Staff Relative
Percentage
Days ( frequency ) Frequency
20 - 39 6 0.24 24%
40 -59 12 0 .48 48%
60 -79 4 0 16 16%
80 - 99 3 0.12 12%

It may be observed that the sum of all relative frequencies is 1.00 or 100 percent
because the frequency of each class has been expressed as a percentage of the total
frequency.
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