social statistics

Frequency Distribution

Frequency distribution—is the most elementary form of descriptive statistics. It is the number of individuals or cases; it symbol is f. It is a table showing the number of responses for each category of a variable.

Note that the f is the lowercase and italicized. In general, almost all statistical symbols are italicized. Throughout this course, pay attention to the case of the symbols. For instance, a lowercase f stands for frequency, while an upper case F stands for another important statistics.

With frequency distribution, you will be analyzing variables---one at a time. This type of analysis is called univariate analysis.

In its simplest forms, it lists the frequencies of responses (number of responses) to each category of a variable. But the frequency distribution take many forms. Some display the percentages of responses to each category of a variable.

They are useful for all kinds of variables, such as

· Numerical

· Categorical

· Continuous

· Discrete.

We use frequency distributions to summarize demographic characteristics---like

· Age,

· Sex,

· Race,

· Marital status

· Religion and

· Political identity.

A frequency distribution can do the followings:

· It can describe each variable of interest.

· It can list the categories of a variable

· It can list the distribution of responses for the categories of the variables.

SEE Problem below

Problem Solving

Construct a frequency distribution for ungrouped data below.

Senior

Freshman

Sophomore

Freshman

Sophomore

Junior

Freshman

Sophomore

Junior

Freshman

Table 1 shows the distribution by Classification

Classification Tally Frequency Percent

Freshman llll 4 40.0

Sophomore lll 3 30.0

Junior ll 2 20.0

Senior l 1 10.0

Total ∑f=10 100.0

Interpretation:

The table shows that 40.0 % of the respondents in the survey revealed that they were freshman students, while only 30.0 percentage indicated that they were sophomores. Another 20.0% reported that their classifications were juniors and lastly only 10.0 % pointed out they were seniors.