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Introduction & Descriptive Statistics

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TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION & DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS BASIC CONCEPTS Situation: A journalist is preparing a program segment on what appears to be the relatively disadvantaged financial position of women and the incidence of female poverty in Australia. Several questions may arise, for example: • What is the pattern of female incomes? • How severe is the problem of female poverty and what proportion fall below the ‘poverty line’? • Has their general level of income improved over the last ten years? • Are single working mothers especially disadvantaged? • Working mothers often need to put their children into day-care. What should the capacity of the local centre be? • How does their income compare with their …show more content…

Eg. TABLES & GRAPHICAL DATA REPRESENTATION Nominal Data Example: The marital status of 15 people is as follows: M D S M W S M M D S M D W M S M= Married S = Single D=Divorced W = Widowed Frequency Table |Status |Frequency |Relative Frequency| |S |4 |.27 | |M |6 |.40 | |D |3 |.20 | |W |2 |.13 | Bar Chart [pic] Pie Chart [pic] The only meaningful measure of spread or variation is the observed variety of values: Single, Married, Divorced, Widowed Ranked Data Ranked data can also be represented using the same methods as for nominal data, but the order is important. Also its ‘centre’ can often be meaningfully represented by the Median and the variation can sometimes be measured by the Range or the Inter Quartile Range. Interval Data Example: The heights of 16 people (to nearest cm.) 147. 156 156 157 162 167 169 172 172 173 175 176 180 181 183 192 Stem and Leaf Display Stem Leaf 14 7 15 667 16 279 17 22356 18 013 19 2 Frequency Table |Group |Frequency |Relative |Cumulative Rel. Freq. | | | |Frequency | | |145.5-155.5 |1

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