NUR INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, LAHORE

Subject: Quantitative Reasoning Course Instructor: Dr. Muhammad Umar

Lecture # 7
dd Date: 16-December-2024

Raw data, or data that have not been summarized in any way, are sometimes referred to as
ungrouped data. Table 2.1 contains 60 years of raw data of the unemployment rates for
Canada. Data that have been organized into a frequency distribution are called grouped data.

Instructor: Muhammad Hassan Total Marks: 50

Table 2.2 presents a frequency distribution for the data displayed in Table 2.1.
One particularly useful tool for grouping data is the frequency distribution, which is a
summary of data presented in the form of class intervals and frequencies. How is a frequency
distribution constructed from raw data? That is, how are frequency distributions like the one
displayed in Table 2.2 constructed from raw data like those presented in Table 2.1? Frequency
distributions are relatively easy to construct. Although some guidelines and rules of thumb help
in their construction, frequency distributions vary in final shape and design, even when the
original raw data are identical. In a sense, frequency distributions are constructed according to
individual business researchers’ taste.
When constructing a frequency distribution, the business researcher should first determine the
range of the raw data. The range often is defined as the difference between the largest and
smallest numbers. The range for the data in Table 2.1 is 9.7 (12.0–2.3). The second step in
constructing a frequency distribution is to determine how many classes it will contain. One
rule of thumb is to select between 5 and 15 classes. If the frequency distribution contains too
few classes, the data summary may be too general to be useful. Too many classes may result
in a frequency distribution that does not aggregate the data enough to be helpful. The final
number of classes is arbitrary. The data in Table 2.1 were grouped into six classes for Table
2.2. After selecting the number of classes, the business researcher must determine the width of
the class interval. An approximation of the class width can be calculated by dividing the range
by the number of classes. For the data in Table 2.1, this approximation would be 9.7/6 = 1.62.
Normally, the number is rounded up to the next whole number, which in this case is 2. The
frequency distribution must start at a value equal to or lower than the lowest number of the
ungrouped data and end at a value equal to or higher than the highest number. The lowest
unemployment rate is 2.3 and the highest is 12.0, so the business researcher starts the frequency
distribution at 1 and ends it at 13. Class endpoints are selected so that no value of the data can
fit into more than one class. The class interval expression “under” in the distribution of Table
2.2 avoids such a problem.
The midpoint of each class interval is called the class midpoint and is sometimes referred to as
the class mark. It is the value halfway across the class interval and can be calculated as the
average of the two class endpoints. For example, in the distribution of Table 2.2, the midpoint
of the class interval 3–under 5 is 4, or (3 + 5)/2. The class midpoint is important, because it
becomes the representative value for each class in most group statistics calculations. The third
column in Table 2.3 contains the class midpoints for all classes of the data from Table 2.2.

Relative frequency is the proportion of the total frequency that is in any given class interval in
a frequency distribution. Relative frequency is the individual class frequency divided by the
total frequency. For example, from Table 2.3, the relative frequency for the class interval 5–
under 7 is 13/60 = .2167.
The cumulative frequency is a running total of frequencies through the classes of a frequency
distribution. The cumulative frequency for each class interval is the frequency for that class
interval added to the preceding cumulative total. The concept of cumulative frequency is used
in many areas, including sales cumulated over a fiscal year, sports scores during a contest
(cumulated points), years of service, points earned in a course, and costs of doing business
over a period.
Construct a frequency distribution for these data. Calculate and display the class midpoints,
relative frequencies, and cumulative frequencies for this frequency distribution.

List three specific uses of cumulative frequencies in business.

Quantitative Data Graphs

One of the most important uses of graphical depiction in statistics is to help the researcher
determine the shape of a distribution. Data graphs can generally be classified as quantitative
or qualitative. Quantitative data graphs are plotted along a numerical scale, and qualitative
graphs are plotted using non-numerical categories. In this section, we will examine five types
of quantitative data graphs: (1) histogram, (2) frequency polygon, (3) dot plot, and (5) stem-
and-leaf plot.
Histograms
One of the more widely used types of graphs for quantitative data is the histogram. A histogram
is a series of contiguous bars or rectangles that represent the frequency of data in given class
intervals. If the class intervals used along the horizontal axis are equal, then the height of the
bars represents the frequency of values in each class interval. If the class intervals are unequal,
then the areas of the bars (rectangles) can be used for relative com parisons of class frequencies.
Construction of a histogram involves labeling the x-axis (abscissa) with the class endpoints
and the y-axis (ordinate) with the frequencies, drawing a horizontal line segment from class
endpoint to class endpoint at each frequency value, and connecting each line segment vertically
from the frequency value to the x-axis to form a series of rectangles (bars). Figure 2.1 is a
histogram of the frequency distribution in Table 2.2 produced.

A histogram is a useful tool for differentiating the frequencies of class intervals. A quick glance
at a histogram reveals which class intervals produce the highest frequency totals. Figure 2.1
clearly shows that the class interval 7–under 9 yields by far the highest frequency count (19).

Frequency Polygons
A frequency polygon, like the histogram, is a graphical display of class frequencies. However,
instead of using bars or rectangles like a histogram, in a frequency polygon each class
frequency is plotted as a dot at the class midpoint, and the dots are connected by a series of
line segments. Construction of a frequency polygon begins by scaling class midpoints along
the horizontal axis and the frequency scale along the vertical axis. A dot is plotted for the
associated frequency value at each class midpoint. Connecting these midpoint dots completes
the graph.
Dot Plot
A relatively simple statistical chart that is generally used to display continuous, quantitative data is
the dot plot. In a dot plot, each data value is plotted along the horizontal axis and is represented on
the chart by a dot. If multiple data points have the same values, the dots will stack up vertically. If
there are many close points, it may not be possible to display all of the data values along the
horizontal axis. Dot plots can be especially useful for observing the overall shape of the distribution
of data points along with identifying data values or intervals for which there are groupings and gaps
in the data.

Stem-and-Leaf Plots
Another way to organize raw data into groups besides using a frequency distribution is a stem-and-
leaf plot. This technique is simple and provides a unique view of the data. A stem-and-leaf plot is
constructed by separating the digits for each number of the data into two groups, a stem and a leaf.
The leftmost digits are the stem and consist of the higher valued digits. The rightmost digits are the
leaves and contain the lower values. If a set of data has only two digits, the stem is the value on the
left and the leaf is the value on the right. For example,if34 is one of the numbers, the stem is 3 and
the leaf is 4.

Table 2.4 contains scores from an examination on plant safety policy and rules given to a group of35
job trainees. A stem-and-leaf plot of these data is displayed in Table 2.5. One advantage of such a
distribution is that the instructor can readily see whether the scores are in the upper or lower end of
each bracket and also determine the spread of the scores. A second advantage of stem-and-leaf
plots is that the values of the original raw data are retained (whereas most frequency distributions
and graphic depictions use the class midpoint to represent the values in a class).

Problems