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Frequency Distributions and Visualizing Data

Histograms, Boxplots and Ogives

 Learning Objectives

Create and interpret Histograms, Boxplots and Ogives

Histograms:

  • A type of ‘bar chart’ organized by classes/categories created for the data (bins)
  • Where the heights of the bars equal to the frequencies of those classes
  • Useful for determining the ‘shape’ of the distribution of the data

Box Plots:

  • The ‘box’ spans from quarter 1 to quarter 3
  • The middle line of the box indicates the median
  • If there are outliers (extremely large/small values), they are indicated by dots or asterisks (*)
  • The lower and upper lines (fences) indicate the highest and lowest non-outlier values in the data
  • Is a great visual tool to help understand the dispersion/spread of the data

Ogives:

  • A line chart where the heights are the cumulative frequency values
  • Useful for estimating the percent of data that lie below or above particular variables or values[1]
  • Can be made by inserting in a line chart where the y-axis values are the cumulative percent frequencies and the x-axis is the class limits column from the cumulative frequency table
  • Useful for determining the ‘spread’ of the data

  1. https://byjus.com/maths/ogive/#:~:text=The%20word%20Ogive%20is%20a,calculated%20using%20a%20frequency%20table. ↵

License

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An Introduction to Business Statistics for Analytics (1st Edition) Copyright © 2024 by Amy Goldlist; Charles Chan; Leslie Major; Michael Johnson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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