In most cases in your statistics course, you will come across data that is presented in a?frequency table. These allow data to be summarised and make them easier to work with.

A frequency table for?ungrouped data?shows the frequency of?individual data values

Why use a frequency table for ungrouped data?

• When collecting large amounts of raw data, it is quicker to use a tally system and then collate the results into a frequency table
• Ungrouped frequency tables are normally used for?numerical, discrete data
• Organising data into a frequency table makes it easier to work with
  • Calculating averages, ranges and summary statistics can be done much quicker from a frequency table than from raw data
• It gives a clear?pattern?of the data
  • It is easy to quickly see where most of the data are and to see extreme values
• A frequency table for ungrouped data keeps all of the original data values
  • It is still possible to calculate the actual averages, ranges and summary statistics

How are mean, median and mode calculated from an ungrouped frequency table?

• You should already be familiar with finding the mean, median and mode from raw, ungrouped data
• The?mode?is the value that occurs?most often?in a data set
  • In an ungrouped frequency table the?data value?with the?highest frequency?will be the mode
• The?median?is the?middle?value when the data is in?order of size
  • To find the median from an ungrouped frequency table, add the frequencies together until you reach the value that is half of the total

A frequency table for?grouped data?is usually used for large amounts of?continuous data.?They shows the frequency of?data values?that are within a particular?group?or?class.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of grouping data?

• Grouping data is especially useful when data can take a large range of different values
• Trends and patterns can be easily spotted when data has been grouped
• Calculations are much quicker with data that has been grouped
• It is important to be aware, however, that grouped frequency tables also have some negatives
  • The actual data values are lost when data is grouped
  • It is only possible to calculate estimated averages, ranges and summary statistics

Notation for grouped frequency tables

• When grouping data, it is important to be clear about which?group?or?class?any data value should be entered into
  • A group entry of 10 – 20 followed by 20 – 30 would be unclear because the number 20 could be entered into both groups
    • If the data are discrete, this could be written as 10 – 19 and 20 – 29
    • For continuous data, this could be changed to 10 – and 20 –

Finding averages from grouped frequency tables

• Instead of finding the?mode, when working with a grouped frequency table we instead find the?modal class
  • This will be the?class?(group) with the?greatest frequency
• It is only possible to calculate an?estimate?for the?mean?and the?median?from a grouped frequency table
• Calculating the?estimated mean?is the same as for ungrouped frequency tables, however you will need to find the?midpoints?first
  • the midpoint is the mean of the upper and lower values in the class boundaries
• Calculating the?estimated median?is more complicated?and questions will only ask for the class that the estimated median would be in