Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Categorical Variable
• A variable is categorical if each observation
Exploring Data belongs to one of a set of categories.
• Examples:
Descriptive Data 1. Gender (Male or Female)
2. Religion (Catholic, Jewish, …)
3. Type of residence (Apartment, House, …)
4. Belief in life after death (Yes or No)

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Content Quantitative Variable

• Types of Variables
• Describing data using graphical summaries • A variable is called quantitative if observations
• Describing the Center of Quantitative Data take numerical values for different magnitudes
of the variable.
• Describing the Spread of Quantitative Data
• How Measures of Position Describe Spread
• Examples:
1. Age
2. Number of brothers/sisters
3. Annual Income
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Variable Categorical vs. Quantitative

• A variable is any characteristic that
is recorded for the subjects in a
• Categorical variables
study – percentage of observations in each category is
important
• Examples: Marital status, Height,
– E.g. % Male, % Female
Weight, IQ
• A variable can be classified as either
– Categorical (e.g. Male / Female) • Quantitative variables
– Quantitative (e.g. Age) – center (a representative value) and spread
• Discrete or (number of children in family) (variability) are important
• Continuous (weight: 70,25 kg) – Average Age
– Variation around the average age
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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

4 types of scale
• Nominal
• Ordinal
• Interval
• Ratio

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Discrete Quantitative Variable Nominal Scale

• A quantitative variable is discrete if its possible values • Nominal scale is simplest scale.
form a set of separate numbers: 0,1,2,3,….
• They are numbers or letters assigned to objects
• Examples:
– serve as labels for identification or classification
1. Number of pets in a household
• e.g. names and gender are categorical variables;
2. Number of children in a family
– ‘M’ for Male and ‘F’ for Female,
3. Number of foreign languages spoken by an
– or ‘1’ for male and ‘2’ for female,
individual
– or ‘1’ for female and ‘2’ for male.
• Other examples include
– marital status, religion, race, colour and employment
status, and so forth.
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Ordinal Scale
Continuous Quantitative Variable
• A subset of the nominal scale
• A quantitative variable – Where the scale follows an order
is continuous if it has • Ordinal scale creates an ordered (ranked)
an infinite number of relationship
possible values • Typical ordinal scales
• Measurements – (i) result of examination: first, second, third and fail;
– (ii) quality of products: ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘fair’ or ‘poor’
• Examples:
– (iii) social class: upper, middle, lower class
1. Height/Weight
2. Age
3. Blood pressure
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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Interval Scale Frequency Table

• Indicate order and distance in units. • Frequency table
• The Interval is a measuring tool – a listing of possible values for a variable
• But Zero point is arbitrary – together with the number of observations
• Example: a price index – or relative frequencies (%) for each value
– the number of the base year (say year 2010) is set to be usually 100
– Price of bread is 40 kn (= 100) is year 2010
– Price of bread is 50 kn (= 125) in year 2015
– We then know price of bread is higher in 2015 by 25%
• Another example of interval scale
– temperature where the initial point is always arbitrary
– O degrees is freezing point in Celsius (used in Europe)
– 32 degrees is freezing point in Fahrenheit (used in US)
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Be careful to distinguish
Ratio Scale
Proportions & Percentages (Rel. Freq.)
• Ratio scales are absolute rather than relative
• If interval scale can only have an absolute zero
– then it is really a ratio scale.
• Absolute zero
– a point on scale where the attribute is zero
• Examples
– age, money and weight are ratio scales
– because they possess an absolute zero and interval
properties
– A person can’t have a negative weight or negative age Proportions and percentages are also
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Graphs for Categorical Variables

• Use pie charts and bar
graphs to summarize
Describing data using graphical categorical variables
summaries 1. Pie Chart: A circle
having a “slice of pie”
for each category
2. Bar Graph: A graph
that displays a vertical
bar for each category

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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Pie Charts Constructing a Histogram

• Summarize categorical 1. Divide into intervals of equal width Sodium in

variable 2. Count # of observations in each interval Cereals
• Drawn as circle where
each category is a slice

• The size of each slice is

proportional to the
percentage in that
category

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Bar Graphs Constructing a Histogram

• Summarizes categorical 3. Label endpoints
variable of intervals on
• Vertical bars for each category horizontal axis
• Height of each bar represents 4. Draw a bar over
either counts or percentages each value or
• Easier to compare categories interval with
with bar graph than with pie height equal to
chart its frequency (or
percentage)
• Called Pareto Charts when
ordered from tallest to
5. Label and title
shortest
Sodium in Cereals
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Histograms Interpreting Histograms

• Assess where a Left and right sides
• Graph that uses bars to distribution is are mirror images
centered by finding
portray frequencies or the median
relative frequencies for a • Assess the spread of
quantitative variable a distribution
• Shape of a
distribution: roughly
symmetric, skewed to
• Frequency is always on
vertical axis
the right, or skewed
• Intervals always on to the left
horizontal axis

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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Examples of Skewness Time Plots

• Display a time series, Time Plot from 1995 – 2001 of
data collected over number of people globally
time who use the Internet
• Plots observation on
the vertical against
time on the
horizontal
• Points are usually
connected

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Shape: Type of Mound

Electricity demand or demand for
Height of 10 year olds seats in a restaurant different
times of day

Describing the Centre of

Quantitative Data

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Outlier Mean
• The mean is the sum
An outlier falls far from the rest of the data of the observations
divided by the
number of
observations
• It is the center of
mass

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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Median Resistant Measures

Order Data • Midpoint of the observations • A measure is resistant if extreme observations
1 78 Order Data when ordered from least to (outliers) have little, if any, influence on its value
2 91 1 78 greatest
– Median is resistant to outliers
3 94 2 91 1. Order observations
– Mean is not resistant to outliers
4 98 3 94 2. If the number of observations
5 99 4 98 is: • Example: 75 people in class
6 101 5 99 a) Odd, the median is the – 72 people absent for 1 day year in year
7 103 6 101 middle observation (99) – 2 people absent for 50 day each
8 105 7 103 b) Even, the median is the – 1 person absent for 100 days
9 114 8 105 average of the two middle
– Median = 1 day
observations (99+101 =100)
9 114 – Mean = 2.42 days
10 121 – Mode = 1 day
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Comparing the Mean and Median

• Mean and median of a symmetric distribution are close
– Mean is often preferred because it uses all data
• But in a skewed distribution, the mean is farther out in
Describing the Spread of
the skewed tail than is the median Quantitative Data
– Median is preferred because it is better representative of a
typical observation

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Mode Range
Range = max – min
Two teams with same average (mean) height = 2.0m
The range is strongly affected by outliers.

• Value that occurs most often

• Highest bar in the histogram
2.1m
2.0m
1.9m
1.8m

2.2m

1.5m

1.8m

2.1m

2.5m
2.1m

• Mode is most often used with categorical data

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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Standard Deviation Empirical Rule: Magnitude of s

• Each data value has an associated deviation
from the mean, xx
• A deviation is positive if it falls above the
mean and negative if it falls below the mean
• The sum of the deviations is always zero

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Standard Deviation

• Standard deviation gives a measure of variation by

summarizing the deviations of each observation from the
mean and calculating an adjusted average of these How Measures of Position
deviations:
1. Find mean
Describe Spread
2. Find each
deviation
3. Square deviations
4. Sum squared
deviations
5. Divide sum by n-1
6. Take square root 38
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Properties of Sample Standard Deviation Percentile

The pth percentile is a value
such that p percent of the
observations fall below or at
that value

1. Measures spread of data

2. Only zero when all observations are same; otherwise, s > 0 70th percentile
3. As the spread increases, s gets larger
4. Same units as observations
5. Not resistant
6. Strong skewness or outliers greatly increase s
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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Finding Quartiles Criteria for Identifying an Outlier

• Splits the data into four parts
with same number of • An observation is a potential outlier if:
observations in each part – it falls more than 1.5 x IQR below the first quartile or
1. Arrange data in order – more than 1.5 x IQR above the third quartile.
2. The median is the second IQR: (75-25) = 50
quartile, Q2
Outlier < -25
3. Q1 is the median of the lower Outlier > 150
half of the observations
4. Q3 is the median of the upper
half of the observations

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Measure of Spread: Quartiles 5 Number Summary

• The five‐number summary
• Quartiles divide a ranked of a dataset consists of:
data set into four equal parts: 1. Minimum value
1. 25% of the data at or below Q1= first quartile = 2.2
2. First Quartile
Q1 and 75% above
2. 50% of the obs are above 3. Median
the median and 50% are M = median = 3.4
4. Third Quartile
below 5. Maximum value
3. 75% of the data at or below
Q3 and 25% above Q3= third quartile = 4.35

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Calculating Interquartile Range Boxplot

1. Box goes from the Q1 to Q3 (the IQR)
• The interquartile range is the distance between 2. Line is drawn inside the box at the median
the third and first quartile, giving spread of middle (the middle value)
50% of the data: IQR = Q3 ‐ Q1 3. Lines go from
– lower end of box to smallest observation
that’s not a potential outlier
– from upper end of box to largest observation
that’s not a potential outlier
4. Potential outliers are shown separately,
often with * or +

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 Math 1530 - Chapter 2

Comparing Distributions using Boxplots

• Boxplots do not display the shape of the distribution as
clearly as histograms
• but are useful for making graphical comparisons of two
or more distributions

1,3
1,3 m
m 1,6 m 1,9 m
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