STATISTICAL DATA

The collection of data that are relevant to the problem being studied is commonly the most difficult,
expensive and time-consuming part of the entire research project.

 Statistical data are usually obtained by counting or measuring items.

Primary data are collected specifically for the analysis desired.

Secondary data have already been compiled and are available for statistical analysis.

QUALITATIVE DATA

Qualitative data can’t be expressed as a number and can’t be measured.

• Qualitative data consist of words, pictures, and symbols, not numbers. It is about qualities.

• Qualitative data is also called categorical data because the information can be sorted by category, not
by number.

EXAMPLES

• Colors e.g. the color of the sea

• Your favorite holiday destination such as Hawaii, New Zealand and etc.

• Names as Juhi, Manya etc

QUANTITATIVE DATA

Quantitative data is data that can be expressed as a number or can be quantified. In other words,
quantitative data can be measured by numerical variables.

Quantitative data are easily amenable to statistical manipulation and can be represented with a wide
variety of statistical types of graphs and charts such as line, graph, bar graph, scatter plot, box and
whisker plot and etc.

DISCRETE DATA

Discrete data is a count that involves integers and it can take only certain values. The discrete values
cannot be subdivided into parts. For example, the number of children in a school is discrete data.

You can count whole individuals. You can’t count 1.5 kids. So, discrete data can take only certain values.
The data variables cannot be divided into smaller parts.

CHARACTERISTICS

✓ You can count the data. It is usually units counted in whole numbers.
✓ The values cannot be divided into smaller pieces and add additional meaning.

✓ It has a limited number of possible values e.g. days of the month.

EXAMPLES

▪ The number of students in a class.

▪ The number of workers in a company.

▪ The number of home runs in a baseball game.

▪ The number of test questions you answered correctly

▪ Shoe sizes.

▪ Number of languages an individual speaks.

CONTINOUS DATA

Continuous data is information that could be meaningfully divided into finer levels. It can be measured
on a scale or continuum and can have almost any numeric value. For example, you can measure your
height at very precise scales — meters, centimeters, millimeters and etc.

You can record continuous data at so many different measurements – width, temperature, time, and
etc. This is where the key difference from discrete types of data lies.

The continuous variables can take any value between two numbers. For example, between 50 and 72
inches, there are literally millions of possible heights: 52.04762 inches, 69.948376 inches and etc.

CHARACTERISTICS

✓ In general, continuous variables are not counted.

✓ The values can be subdivided into smaller and smaller pieces and they have additional meaning.

✓ The continuous data is measurable.

✓ It has an infinite number of possible values within an interval.

EXAMPLES

✓ The amount of time required to complete a project.

✓ The height of children.

✓ The amount of time it takes to sell shoes.

✓ The amount of rain, in inches, that falls in a storm.

✓ The weight of a truck. The speed of cars.

✓ Time to wake up.

STATISTICS

Statistics is the science of conducting studies to

-collect numerical data

- organize/summarize (Classification)

- analysis

- draw valid conclusions from them.

(Interpreting your findings)

Statistics is used to analyze the results of surveys and as a tool in scientific research to make decisions
based on controlled experiments.

Other uses of statistics include operations research, quality control, estimation and prediction.

TYPES OF STATISTICS

• Descriptive statistics :

Methods of organizing, summarizing, and presenting data in an informative way.

• Inferential statistics :

The methods used to determine something about a population on the basis of a sample.

POPULATION

The entire group of people, animals or things about which we want information is called population.

SAMPLE

A part of the population from which we actually collect information, used to draw conclusion about the
whole.

Usually populations are so large that a researcher cannot examine the entire group. Therefore, a sample
is selected to represent the population in a research study. The goal is to use the results obtained from
the sample to help answer questions about the population.

MEASURES OF DISPERSION
Measures of central tendency give us an idea of the concentration of the observations about the central
part of the distribution. To know the scatteredness or homogeneity/ heterogeneity of the data, we study
dispersion.

RANGE

It is the simplest method of measuring dispersion. The range is the difference between the highest and
lowest observation of the distribution.

Range = Max. value – Min. value

The relative measure corresponding to range, called the coefficient of range, is obtained by applying the
formula: Coefficient of range = Max. value – Min. value /Max. value + Min. value

DATA PRESENTATION

When conducting a statistical study, the researcher must gather data for the particular variable under
study. For example, if a researcher wishes to study the number of people who

were bitten by poisonous snakes in a specific geographic area over the past several years, he or she has
to gather the data from various doctors, hospitals, or health departments.

To describe situations, draw conclusions, or make inferences about events, the researcher must
organize the data in some meaningful way. The most convenient method of organizing data is to
construct a frequency distribution.

RAW DATA

When the data are in original form, they are called raw data.

FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION

A frequency distribution is the organization of raw data in table form, using classes and frequencies

CLASS

A frequency distribution is the organization of raw data in table form, using classes and frequencies

MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY

• It is occasionally called ‘averages’.

• It is the representative of the entire distribution.

• The following are the measures of Central Tendency:-

• Arithmetic mean

• Median
• Mode

IMPORTANCE OF MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY

 To find representative value:

Measures of central tendency or averages give us one value for the distribution and this value
represents the entire distribution. In this way averages convert a group of figures into one value.

 To condense data:

Collected and classified figures are vast. To condense these figures we use average. Average converts
the whole set of figures into just one figure and thus helps in condensation.

 To make comparisons:

To make comparisons of two or more than two distributions, we have to find the representative values
of these distributions. These representative values are found with the help of measures of the central
tendency

 It helps in further statistical analysis

ARITHEMATIC MEAN

The arithmetic mean , or simply the mean or average is the sum of a collection of values divided by the
total number of values in the collection.

CUMMULATIVE FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION

A cumulative frequency distribution is a distribution that shows the number of data values less than
(usually an upper boundary) or more than (usually an lower boundary) to a specific value.

MEDIAN

The median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample (a population or
a probability distribution). For a data set, it may be thought of as the "middle" value.

The median is that value of the variable which divides the group into two equal parts, one part
comprising of all values greater, and the other, all values less than median.

MERITS OF MEDIAN

Median is rigidly defined as in the case of Mean.

It can also be used for the Qualities; those can’t give A.M; as is in case of intelligence etc. It is possible
to arrange in any order and to locate the middle valve. For such cases it is the best measure.

It can be located graphically.

The mode of a set of data values is the value that appears most often. It is the value that is most likely to
be sampled. the mode is a way of expressing, in a (usually) single number, important information

about a random variable or a population.

ADVANTAGES OF MODE

 It is easy to understand and simple to calculate.

 It is not affected by extremely large or small values.

 It can be located just by inspection in ungrouped data and discrete frequency distribution.

 It can be useful for qualitative data.

 It can be computed in an open-end frequency table.

 It can be located graphically.

DISCRETE FREQUENCY DATA

Discrete data is generated by counting, and each and every observation is exact. When an observation is
repeated, it is counted. The number for which the observation is repeated is called the frequency of that
observation

CUMMULATIVE FREQUENCY DATA

A cumulative frequency distribution is the sum of the class and all classes below it in
a frequency distribution. All that means is you're adding up a value and all of the values that came
before it.