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1.3 Frequency, Frequency Tables, and Levels of Measurement

  • Page ID
    36448
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    Learning Objective:

    In this section, you will:
    • Use rounding rules to round final answers.
    • Determine the levels of measurement for data.
    • Use frequency tables to organize and analyze data.


    Answers and Rounding Off

    • Carry your final answer one more decimal place than was present in the original data.
    • Round off only the final answer. Do not round off any intermediate results, if possible.

    Levels of Measurement

    Data can be classified into four levels of measurement.
    Nominal scale level: Categories, colors, names, labels, yes or no responses. Nominal scale data are not ordered.
    Ordinal scale level: Data can be ordered, but differences are meaningless.
    Interval scale level: Data can be ordered, but differences are meaningful. Data does not have a starting point.
    Ratio scale level: Ratio scale data is like interval scale data, but it has a 0 point and ratios can be calculated.

    Frequency Tables

    • A frequency is the number of times a value of the data occurs.
    • A relative frequency is the ratio (fraction or proportion) of the number of times a value of the data occurs in the set of all outcomes to the total number of outcomes.

    o To find the relative frequencies, divide each frequency by the total number of students in the sample.

    Cumulative relative frequency is the accumulation of the previous relative frequencies.

    o To find the cumulative relative frequencies, add all the previous relative frequencies to the relative frequency for the current row


    Example 1:

    Complete the frequency table with the following information. Twenty students are asked how many hours they worked per day. Their responses, in hours, are as follows: 5, 6, 3, 3, 2, 4, 7, 5, 2, 3, 5, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 5, 2, 5, 3.

    Hours Worked per Day Frequency Relative Frequency Cumulative Relative Frequency
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
    • What percent of students work exactly 4 hours?
    • What percent of students that work less than 3 hours?
    • What is the percent of students that work from 4 to 6 hours?
    • Find the number of students that work from 3 to 5 hours?
    • What fraction of the students work from 6 to 7 hours?
    • What is the frequency of students that work from 3 to 6 hours?
    • What is the relative frequency of students that work 3 or less?
    • What is the cumulative relative frequency for 4? Explain what this number tells you about the data.


    For more information and examples see online textbook OpenStax Introductory Statistics pages 26-35.

    “Introduction to Statistics” by OpenStax, used is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license.


    1.3 Frequency, Frequency Tables, and Levels of Measurement is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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