Summarizing Categorical Data in Statistics
Categorical data capture qualities or characteristics about the individual, such as a person's eye color, gender, political party, or opinion on some issue [more…]
How SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) Works
The developers of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) made every effort to make the software easy to use. This prevents you from making mistakes or even forgetting something. That's [more…]
Raising the Bar on Bar Graphs in Statistics
A bar graph, or bar chart, is perhaps the most common data display used by the media. Like a pie chart, a bar graph breaks categorical data down by group, showing how many are in each group. A bar graph [more…]
Statistics: More than Just Numbers
Most statisticians don't want statistics to be thought of as "just statistics." While the rest of the world views them as such, statisticians don't think of themselves as number crunchers; more often, [more…]
The Four Ways to Talk to SPSS
More than one way exists for you to command the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to do your bidding. And you don't have to choose one and stick with it — you can perform tasks using whichever [more…]
Generalizing Statistical Results to the Entire Population
Making conclusions about a much broader population than your sample actually represents is one of the biggest no-no's in statistics. This kind of problem is called [more…]
Statistics Conundrums: Dealing with Survey Nonresponders
Nonresponders are always a problem when you're calculating the results of a survey. Before you can crunch the numbers in all the surveys you get back, you have to decide what to do about the surveys you [more…]
Recognizing the Impact of Statistics in Polls
A survey is an instrument that collects data through questions and answers and is used to gather information about the opinions, behaviors, demographics, lifestyles, and other reportable characteristics [more…]
