Very Basic Statistics

Course Content

Data Types

Descriptive Statistics

Data Displays
Data Types
 Variables

Quantitative Variable
A variable that is counted or measured on a
numerical scale
Can be continuous or discrete (always a whole
number).

Qualitative Variable
A non-numerical variable that can be classified into
categories, but cant be measured on a numerical
scale.
Can be nominal or ordinal
 Continuous Data

Continuous data is measured on a scale.

The data can have almost any numeric value
and can be recorded at many different points.

For example
Temperature (39.25oC)
Time (2.468 seconds)
Height (1.25m)
Weight (66.34kg)
 Discrete Data

Discrete data is based on counts, for example;

The number of cars parked in a car park

The number of patients seen by a dentist each day.

Only a finite number of values are possible e.g.

a dentist could see 10, 11, 12 people but not
12.3 people
 Nominal Data

A Nominal scale is the most basic level of measurement.

The variable is divided into categories and objects are
measured by assigning them to a category.

For example,
Colours of objects (red, yellow, blue, green)
Types of transport (plane, car, boat)

There is no order of magnitude to the categories i.e.

blue is no more or less of a colour than red.
 Ordinal Data

Ordinal data is categorical data, where the categories

can be placed in a logical order of ascendance e.g.;
1 5 scoring scale, where 1 = poor and 5 = excellent
Strength of a curry (mild, medium, hot)

There is some measure of magnitude, a score of 5

excellent is better than a score of 4 good.

But this says nothing about the degree of difference

between the categories i.e. we cannot assume a
customer who thinks a service is excellent is twice as
happy as one who thinks the same service is good.
 Task 1

Look at the following variables and decide if they are

qualitative or quantitative, ordinal, nominal, discrete
or continuous

Age
Year of birth
Sex
Height
Number of staff in a department
Time taken to get to work
Preferred strength of coffee
Company size
Descriptive Statistics
 Session Content

Measures of Location

Measures of Dispersion
Measures of Location
 Common Measures

Measures of location summarise the data with

a single number
There are three common measures of location
Mean
Mode
Median

Quartiles are another measure

 Mean

The mean (more precisely, the arithmetic mean) is

commonly called the average
In formulas the mean is usually represented by x
read as x-bar.
The formula for calculating the mean from n individual
data-points is;

x x
n
X bar equals the sum of the data divided by the
number of data-points
 Pros & Cons
Advantages
basic calculation is easily understood
all data values are used in the calculation
used in many statistical procedures.
Disadvantages
It may not be an actual meaningful
value, e.g. an average of 2.4 children
per family.
Can be greatly affected by extreme
values in a dataset. e.g. seven
students take a test and receive the
following scores.
40 42 45 50 53 54 99
The average score is 54.7 but is this
really representative of the group?
If the extreme value of 99 is dropped,
the average falls to 47.3
 Mode

The mode represents the most commonly occurring

value within a dataset.

We usually find the mode by creating a frequency

distribution in which we tally how often each value
occurs.

If we find that every value occurs only once, the distribution

has no mode.

If we find that two or more values are tied as the most

common, the distribution has more than one mode.
 Pros & Cons

Advantages Disadvantages
easy to understand
not all sets of data have a modal
not affected by outliers value
(extreme values)

can also be obtained for some sets of data have more

qualitative data than one modal value

e.g. when looking at the

frequency of colours of cars
we may find that silver occurs multiple modal values are often
most often difficult to interpret
 Task 2

The following values are the ages of students in their

first year of a course

18, 19, 18, 25, 22, 20, 21, 45, 33, 20, 18, 18

Find the mean age of the students

Find the modal value
In your opinion which is the better measure of location
for this data set?
 Median

Median means middle, and the median is the middle of

a set of data that has been put into rank order.

Specifically, it is the value that divides a set of data into

two halves, with one half of the observations being
larger than the median value, and one half smaller.

Half the data < 29 Half the data > 29

18 24 29 30 32
 Finding the Median from Individual
Data
Step 1:- Arrange the observations in increasing order i.e.
rank order. The median will be the number that corresponds
to the middle rank.

Step 2:- Find the middle rank with the following formula:
Middle rank = *(n+1)

Step 3 Identify the value of the median

If n is an odd number the middle rank will fall on an
observation. The median is then the value of that
observation.
 Finding the Median from Individual
Data
If n is an even number, the middle rank will fall between
two observations. In this case the median is equal to the
arithmetic mean of the values of the two observations

40 42 45 50 53 54 70 99

Position of Median = *(n+1) = 4.5

data - point 4 data - point 5

Median = 2
50 53
51.5
Median = 2
 Pros & Cons
Advantages Disadvantages

the concept is easy to data must be arranged in rank

understand
the median can be
determined for any type of
data (with the exception of
nominal)
order (ascending or
descending)
cannot combine medians in
statistical calculations as with
mean values

the median is not unduly

influenced by extreme values
in the dataset
 Task 3

Using the student age data below, find the

median age

18, 19, 18, 25, 22, 20, 21, 45, 33, 20, 18, 18
 Quartiles

Also known as percentiles

Lower quartile - 25% of the data is below this
Position of Q1 = *(n+1)

Upper quartile 75% of the data is below this

Position of Q3 = *(n+1)

If a quartile falls on an observation, the value of the

quartile is the value of that observation.
For example, if the position of a quartile is 20, its value is
the value of the 20th observation.
 Quartiles

If a quartile lies between observations, the value of the quartile

is the value of the lower observation plus the specified fraction
of the difference between the two observations.

40 42 45 50 53 54 70 99
Position of Upper Quartile = *(n+1) = 6.75
Upper quartile = data-point 6 + 0.75*(data-point 7 data-point 6)
Upper quartile = 54 + 0.75*(70 54) = 66
 Task 4

Using the student age data below find the

upper and lower quartiles

18, 19, 18, 25, 22, 20, 21, 45, 33, 20, 18, 18
Measures of Dispersion
 Common Measures

The dispersion in a set of data is the variation among

the set of data values.

It measures whether they are all close together, or

more scattered.

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 2 4 6 8 10 12
Report turnaround time (days) Report turnaround time (days)
 Common Measures

The four common measures of spread are

the range
the inter-quartile range
the variance
the standard deviation
 Range

The range is the difference between the largest and the

smallest values in the dataset i.e. the maximum
difference between data-points in the list.
It is sensitive to only the most extreme values in the list.
The range of a list is 0 if and only if all the data-points
in the list are equal.

4 16 Days
Range
 Pros & Cons

Advantages Disadvantages

best for symmetric data doesnt use all of the

with no outliers data, only the extremes

easy to compute and very much affected if the

understand extremes are outliers

good option for ordinal only shows maximum

spread, does not show
data
shape
 Task 5

Using the student age data find the range of

the data.

18, 19, 18, 25, 22, 20, 21, 45, 33, 20, 18, 18
 Inter-quartile Range

(upper quartile lower quartile)

Essentially describes how much the middle 50% of
your dataset varies

example: if all patients in a dentist surgery took more-

or-less the same time to be treated with only one or
two exceptionally quick or long appointments you
would expect the inter-quartile range to be very small

but if all appointments were either very quick or very

long, with few in between then the inter-quartile range
would be larger.
 Pros & Cons
Advantages
Good for ordinal data
Ignores extreme values
More stable than the range
because it ignores outliers
Disadvantages
Harder to calculate and
understand
Doesnt use all the information
(ignores half of the data-
points, not just the outliers)
Tails almost always matter in
data and these arent included
Outliers can also sometimes
matter and again these arent
included.
 Task 6

Using the student age data find the inter-

quartile range.

18, 19, 18, 25, 22, 20, 21, 45, 33, 20, 18, 18
 Variance and Standard Deviation

(, s2) =(population notation, sample notation)

The variance (s2)and standard deviation
(s)are measures of the deviation or dispersion
of observations (x) around the mean ( of a
distribution
Variance is an average squared deviation from
the mean
 Variance and Standard Deviation

The standard deviation (SD) is the square root of the

variance.
small SD = values cluster closely around the mean
large SD = values are scattered

1 SD Mean 1 SD
Mean
1 SD 1 SD

4 6 8 10 12 14 16 Days 8 10 12
 Variance and Standard Deviation

The following formulae define these measures

Population Sample

Variance 2
x 2

Variance s 2
x x 2

N n 1
Standard Deviation 2 Standard Deviation s s 2
 Variance

Advantages:
uses all of the data values

Disadvantages:
the variance is measured in the original units squared
extreme values or outliers effect the variance
considerably
hard to calculate manually
 Standard Deviation

Advantages:
same units of measurement as the values
useful in theoretical work and statistical methods
and inference

Disadvantages:
hard to calculate manually
 Task 7

Using the student age data find the variance

and the standard deviation

18, 19, 18, 25, 22, 20, 21, 45, 33, 20, 18, 18
 Session Summary

Measures of Location
Mean
Mode
Median
Quartiles

Measures of Dispersion
Range
Interquartile Range
Variance
Standard Deviation
Data Displays
 Session Content

Histograms
Run charts
Box plots
Bar charts
Pareto charts
Pie charts
Scatter plots
Contingency tables
 Histograms
Histogram of dataset 1 (normal)
30

25

20
Frequency

15

10

0
45.0 52.5 60.0 67.5 75.0 82.5 90.0
dataset 1 (normal)
 Run Charts
Time Series Plot of Time Taken

35.0

32.5
Time Taken

30.0

27.5

25.0

mon tue wed thu fri mon tue wed thu fri mon tue wed thu fri mon tue wed thu fri
Day
 Boxplots
Boxplot of dataset 1 (norma, dataset 2 (expon, dataset 3 (unifo

400

300
Data

200

100

dataset 1 (normal) dataset 2 (exponential) dataset 3 (uniform)

 Bar Charts

Chart of Frequency
20

15
Frequency

10

0
missed dose wrong patient wrong dose wrong time wrong medicine
Causes of Medication Errors
 Pareto Charts
Pareto Chart of Causes of Medication Errors
40 100

80
30
Frequency

Percent
60
20
40

10
20

0 0
Causes of Medication Errors

Frequency 18 15 4 2 1
Percent 45.0 37.5 10.0 5.0 2.5
Cum % 45.0 82.5 92.5 97.5 100.0
 Pie Charts
Pie Chart of Causes of Medication Errors
Category
missed dose
1, 2.5% wrong patient
4, 10.0% 2, 5.0%
wrong dose
wrong time
wrong medicine

15, 37.5%
18, 45.0%
 Scatterplots

Scatterplot of Weight Loss vs Time on Diet

80

70

60

50
Weight Loss

40

30

20

10

0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Time on Diet
 Contingency Tables

Colour of eyes
Colour of hair Brown Green/grey Blue Total
Black 50 54 41 145
Brown 38 46 48 132
Fair 22 30 31 83
Ginger 10 10 20 40
Total 120 140 140 400=N
 Session Summary

Histograms
Run charts
Box plots
Bar charts
Pareto charts
Pie charts
Scatter plots
Contingency tables
 Course Summary

Data Types

Descriptive Statistics

Data Displays