CHAPTER THREE
SUMMARIZING DATA
Mengistu Y.
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Objectives
• At the end of this lesson, the student will be able to:
• Identify the different methods of data summarization
• Compute appropriate summary values for a set of data
• Appreciate the properties and limitations of summary
values
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Summary Measures
Describing Data Numerically
Central Tendency Variation Shape
Arithmetic Mean Range Skewness
Median Interquartile Range
Mode Variance
Geometric Mean Standard Deviation
Quartiles Coefficient of Variation
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MEASURES OF CENTRAL TENDENCY
• The tendency of statistical data to get concentrated at
certain values is called the “Central Tendency or
average”
• Mean
• Median
• Mode
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The Arithmetic Mean or simple Mean
•The mean is the average of the numbers. It
is add up all the numbers, then divide by
how many numbers there are
• It is written in statistical terms as:
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• Example 1: What is the Mean of these numbers? 6, 11, 7
• Add the numbers: 6 + 11 + 7 = 24
• Divide by how many numbers (there are 3 numbers): 24 / 3 = 8
• The Mean is 8
Why Does This Work?
• It is because 6, 11 and 7 added together is the same as 3 lots of 8:
• It is like you are "flattening out" the numbers.
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Example 2
Birth weights(gm) of all live
born infant born at a private What is the arithmetic mean
hospital in a city, during a 1- for the sample birth weights?
week period.
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Weighted Mean
•When averaging quantities, it is often necessary
to account for the fact that not all of them are
equally important in the phenomenon being
described.
•In order to give quantities being averaged there
proper degree of importance, it is necessary to
assign them relative importance called weights,
and then calculate a weighted mean.
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•The weighted mean of a set
of numbers X1, X2, … and Xn,
whose relative importance is
expressed numerically by a
corresponding set of
numbers w1, w2, … and wn, is
given by
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• Example: In a given drug shop four different drugs were sold for unit
price of 60, 85, 95 and 50 birr and the total numbers of drugs sold
were 10, 10, 5 and 20 respectively. What is the average price of the
four drugs in this drug shop?
• Solution: for this example we have to use weighted mean using
number of drugs sold as the respective weights for each drug's price.
Therefore, the average price will be: 65 birr
• If we don't consider the weights, the average price will be 72.5 birr
𝟔𝟎∗𝟏𝟎+𝟖𝟓∗𝟏𝟎+𝟗𝟓∗𝟓+𝟓𝟎∗𝟐𝟎
Weighted mean= =65
𝟏𝟎+𝟏𝟎+𝟓+𝟐𝟎
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Weighted Mean
• We can also calculate a weighted mean using some weighting
factor:
e.g. What is the average income of all
n
w x
people in cities A, B, and C :
City Avg. Income Population
i i
x
A $23,000 100,000
i 1
n B $20,000 50,000
w
i 1
i
C $25,000 150,000
Here, population is the weighting factor and the average
income is the variable of interest
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Geometric Mean
• The Geometric Mean is a special type of average where we multiply
the numbers together and then take a square root (for two numbers),
cube root (for three numbers) etc.
Example: What is the Geometric Mean of 2 and 18?
• First we multiply them: 2 × 18 = 36
• Then (as there are two numbers) take the square root: √36 = 6
• Geometric Mean of 2 and 18 = √(2 × 18) = 6
• It is like the area is the same!
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Example: What is the Geometric Mean of 10, 51.2 and 8?
• First we multiply them: 10 × 51.2 × 8 = 4096
• Then (as there are three numbers) take the cube root: 3√4096 = 16
• For n numbers: multiply them all together and then take the nth
root (written n√ )
• Geometric Mean = 3√(10 × 51.2 × 8) = 16
• It is like the volume is the same:
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Characteristics of mean
• The value of the arithmetic mean is determined by every
item in the series.
• It is greatly affected by extreme values.
Advantages
• It is based on all values given in the distribution.
• It is most easily understood.
• It is most amenable to algebraic treatment.
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Disadvantages
• It may be greatly affected by extreme items and its
usefulness as a “Summary of the whole” may be
considerably reduced.
• When the distribution has open-ended classes, its
computation would be based assumption, and therefore may
not be valid.
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Median
•Suppose there are n observations in a sample. If
these observations are ordered from smallest to
largest, then the median is defined as follows:
•The sample median is
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Example 2
2.2. Consider the following
2.1. Compute the sample data, which consists of white
median for the birth weight blood counts taken on
data in example 1. admission of all patients
entering a small hospital on a
given day. Compute the
median white-blood count
(103).
7, 35,5,9,8,3,10,12,8
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i) Characteristics of Median
• It is an average of position/location .
• It is affected by the number of items than by extreme values.
ii) Advantages
• It is easily calculated and is not much disturbed by extreme
values
• It is more typical of the series
• The median may be located even when the data are
incomplete, e.g, when the class intervals are irregular and the
final classes have open ends.
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iii) Disadvantages
• it is determined mainly by the middle points in a
sample and is less sensitive to the actual numerical
values of the remaining data points.
• It is not so generally familiar as the arithmetic mean
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Mode
• It is the value of the observation that occurs with the greatest
frequency.
• A particular disadvantage is that, with a small number of
observations, there may be no mode.
• In addition, sometimes, there may be more than one mode
such as when dealing with a bimodal (two-peak) distribution.
• Find the modal values for the following data
a) 22, 66, 69, 70, 73. (No modal value)
b) 1.8, 3.0, 3.3, 2.8, 2.9, 3.6, 3.0, 1.9, 3.2, 3.5 (modal value = 3.0 kg)
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Mode
Characteristics
• It is an average of position
• It is not affected by extreme values
• It is the most typical value of the distribution
Advantages
• Since it is the most typical value it is the most descriptive
average
• Since the mode is usually an “actual value”, it indicates the
precise value of an important part of the series.
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Disadvantages:-
• Unless the number of items is fairly large and the
distribution reveals a distinct central tendency, the mode has
no significance
• It is not capable of mathematical treatment
• In a small number of items the mode may not exist.
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Skewness:
• If extremely low or extremely high observations are present in a
distribution, then the mean tends to shift towards those scores.
Based on the type of skewness, distributions can be:
• Negatively skewed distribution: occurs when majority of scores are
at the right end of the curve and a few small scores are scattered at
the left end.
• Positively skewed distribution: Occurs when the majority of scores
are at the left end of the curve and a few extreme large scores are
scattered at the right end.
• Symmetrical distribution: It is neither positively nor negatively
skewed. A curve is symmetrical if one half of the curve is the mirror
image of the other half.
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Skewness…
• Data can be "skewed", meaning it tends to have a long tail on one
side or the other:
• Negative Skew?
• Why is it called negative skew? Because the long "tail" is on the
negative side of the peak.
• The mean is also on the left of the peak.
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Skewness…
The Normal Distribution has No Skew
A Normal Distribution is not skewed.
It is perfectly symmetrical.
And the Mean is exactly at the peak.
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Skewness…
Positive Skew
And positive skew is when the long tail is on the
positive side of the peak, and some people say it
is "skewed to the right".
The mean is on the right of the peak value.
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Skewness…
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Measures of Dispersion
• Which of the
distributions of scores
has the larger 125
dispersion? 100
75
50
25
The upper distribution 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
has more dispersion
because the scores 125
100
are more spread out 75
50
25
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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Measures of Dispersion
• How “spread out” the numbers are about the centre?
• Consider the following data sets:
Mean
Set 1: 60 40 30 50 60 40 70 50
Set 2: 50 49 49 51 48 50 53 50
• The two data sets given above have a mean of 50, but obviously set 1 is
more “spread out” than set 2 how do we express this numerically?
• Some of the commonly used measures of dispersion (variation) are: Range,
inter quartile range, quartiles, percentiles, variance, standard deviation and
coefficient of variation.
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Range and Interquartile Rage
• Range
• Simplest and the crudest measure of variation
• Difference between the largest and the smallest observations: Range =
Xlargest – Xsmallest
• Ignores the way in which data are distributed
• It wastes information for it takes no account of the entire data.
• Sensitive to outliers
• Interquartile Range
• Eliminate some high- and low-valued observations and calculate the range
from the remaining values
• Interquartile range = 3rd quartile – 1st quartile
= Q 3 – Q1
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Quartiles and Percentiles
• The quartiles divide the distribution into four equal parts.
• Deciles: If data is ordered and divided into 10 parts, then cut points
are called Deciles
• Percentiles: If data is ordered and divided into 100 parts, then cut
points are called Percentiles
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Quartiles
• The 25th percentile is When we wish to find the
often referred to as the quartiles for a set of data, the
first quartile and denoted following formulas are used
Q1.
• The 50th percentile (the
median) is referred to as
the second or middle
quartile and written Q2’
and
• the 75th percentile is
referred to as the third
quartile, Q3.
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Using the Five-Number Summary to Explore the Shape
• Box-and-Whisker Plot: A Graphical display of data using 5-number
summary:
Minimum, Q1, Median, Q3, Maximum
• The Box and central line are centered between the endpoints if data
are symmetric around the median
Min Q1 Median Q3 Max
Distribution Shape and
Box-and-Whisker Plot
Left-Skewed Symmetric Right-Skewed
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q1 Q2 Q3
Standard Deviation and Variance
• show the scatter of the individual measurements around the mean of
all the measurements in a given distribution.
• The variance represents squared units and, therefore, is not an
appropriate measure of dispersion when we wish to express this
concept in terms of the original units.
• To obtain a measure of dispersion in original units, we merely take the
square root of the variance. The result is called the standard
deviation.
• Variance the average of the squared difference from the mean
• Standard deviation is the square root of variance
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Variance and Standard Deviation
Population Sample
i
x 2
ix x 2
s
N n 1
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SD variance
To calculate standard deviation
1. Calculate the mean
x
2. Calculate the residual for each x xx
3. Square the residuals ( x x )2
4. Calculate the sum of the squares
xx
2
5. Divide the sum in Step 4 by (n-1) x x 2
n 1
6. Take the square root of quantity
in Step 5
x x 2
n 1
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Example- Find Standard Deviation of Ungroup
Data
Family No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Size (xi) 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7
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Here, x
x i
50
5
n 10
Family No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total
xi 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 50
xi x -2 -2 -1 -1 0 0 1 1 2 2 0
x i x 2
4 4 1 1 0 0 1 1 4 4 20
ix x 2
s 2.2 1.48
20
s2 2.2,
n 1 9
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Example
• The length of a newborn baby are: 600mm, 470mm, 170mm, 430mm
and 300mm.
• Find out the Mean, the Variance, and the Standard Deviation.
• Your first step is to find the Mean:
• Answer:
• Mean = 600 + 470 + 170 + 430 + 300 = 1970 = 394
5 5
• so the mean (average) height is 394 mm.
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To calculate the Variance, take each difference,
square it, and then average the result:
Standard Deviation
σ = √21,704
= 147.32...
= 147 (to the nearest
mm)
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Coefficient of Variation
• Measures relative variation
• Always in percentage (%)
• Shows variation relative to mean
• Can be used to compare two or more sets of data
measured in different units
S
CV 100%
X
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Thank you!
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