POL 3371 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Pie Chart, Histogram, Bar Chart

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POL 3371
• Professor: Ivan Katchanovski

Document Summary

Descriptive statistics: describes data, summarizes data. Inferential statistics: inferences about data, hypothesis testing. Measures of central tendency: mode number that appears most often in a dataset, median, mean. Measures of variability/dispersion: range, standard deviation, variance. Spss analyze descriptive statistics frequencies (select variables) Graphs/charts can be used to illustrate frequency distributions: bar charts, pie charts, line charts, histograms. Bar chart: most appropriate for nominal and ordinal variables. Pie chart: most appropriate for nominal and ordinal variables with small number of values (categories) Histogram: most appropriate for interval/ratio variables with large number of values. Analyze descriptive statistics frequencies graphs (select variable and o appropriate chart) Mode: most common value, all types of variables, can be identified by the largest valid percent value in the frequency distribution table. Median: middle value, ordinal or interval-ratio variables, can be identified as the middle value, or value corresponding to 50% of the cases in cumulative percent frequency distribution.