This frees up intellectual resources for analyzing the results, rather than agonizing over who and how processed the data, and if any mistakes were made in the process.
While StatPlus is a "heavy-duty" professional statistical analysis tool, the interface is so simple that even people who have no knowledge of statistics are capable of processing data, provided they know how to use PC and clear instructions are given. The range of possible applications of StatPlusis virtually unlimited - sociology, financial analysis, biostatistics, economics, insurance industry, healthcare and clinical research, probability calculations for lotteries and gambling operations - to name just a few fields where the program is already being extensively used. Either way, you are simply naming the different groups for the data.With StatPlus, one gets a robust suite of statistics tools and graphical analysis methods that are easily accessed though a simple and straightforward interface.
You can use the country abbreviation, or you can use numbers to code the country name. Country of residence is an example of a nominal variable. With nominal data, the sample is also divided into groups but without any particular ordering. For example, in a survey where you are asked to give your opinion on a scale from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree,” your responses are categorical. With categorical data, the sample is often divided into groups and the responses have a specific ordering. Histograms do not make sense for categorical or nominal data since they are measured on a scale with only a few possible values. Categorical or nominal data: use bar charts Some examples of continuous data are:įor all of these examples, a histogram is an appropriate graphical tool to explore the distribution of the data. Histograms make sense for continuous data since they are measured on a scale with many possible values. Histograms and types of data Continuous data: appropriate for histograms With some software, you can explore group differences in a single histogram, as is shown in the figures above. If there is a possibility of groups, you are likely to learn more about the data by creating separate histograms for each group. These graphs help identify an important consideration: whenever you create a histogram, think about whether or not there are groups in your data. However, it is harder to see the overall shape than in the first figure. You can still see the center, spread, and shape of the data.
However, some software tools allow you to change the number of bins and bin starting points, which allows you to explore and better understand your data.įigure 2 shows the same data as in Figure 1 but with many more bars. With software, the bins are defined by the program.
The bar height then shows the number of people in each decade. For example, to create a histogram for age in years, you might decide on bins by decade (0-10, 11-20, and so on).
With equal bins, the height of the bars shows the frequency of data values in each bin. Most of the time, the bins are of equal size. To generate a histogram, the range of data values for each bar must be determined. The bars represent the measured values for each category. The bars represent the number of values occurring within a range specified on the horizontal axis. Histograms do not have gaps between bars. Histograms are used with continuous data, while bar charts are used with categorical or nominal data.
The key difference between histograms and bar charts is the type of data that is being plotted. What is the difference between histograms and bar charts?