Frequency Distributions

2nd SARA Statistics Winter School, 23-27 Jan 2026

Do women tend to prefer ❤️ dating men with higher salaries?

😣😣 “the problem with data is that you usually have too much for your mind to make sense of them”

Frequency Distribution

“Frequency distribution can either be a table or a graph that shows each possible score along with the number of times that score occurred in the data.”

Frequency Distribution

• Frequency: how many times each score occurs.

• If you add up the frequencies (\(\sum f\)) you get the sample size (\(N\)).

• We should mention the category even if the freqency is zero.

🤔 How does this help me to understand whether women are attracted to guys with high salaries?

Relative Frequency: How often a response is observed relative to the total number of responses.

Relative Frequency

\[ relative\;frequency = \frac{frequency\;of\;response}{total\;number\;of\;responses}\\ = \frac{f}{N} \]

Relative Frequency of Rating 10

\[ relative\;frequency = \frac{frequency\;of\;rating\;10}{total\;number\;of\;responses}\\ = \frac{2}{20}\\=0.1 \]

10% of women rated a high salary’s importance at 10 out of 10.

🤯 Your Turn

Calculate Relative Frequency for score 4 on High Salary.

Your Turn: Answer

Cumulative Percentage

Graphical Frequency Distributions: Histograms

Graphical Frequency Distributions: Frequency Polygon

Practice

• Frequency table

• Relative frequency table

• Visualizing Relative Frequencies