Obtaining frequency distributions, Obtaining frequency distributions ,18-5 – HP 50g Graphing Calculator User Manual

Page 572

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Page 18-5

The range of the sample is the difference between the maximum and minimum
values of the sample. Since the calculator, through the pre-programmed
statistical functions provides the maximum and minimum values of the sample,
you can easily calculate the range.

Coefficient of variation
The coefficient of variation of a sample combines the mean, a measure of
central tendency, with the standard deviation, a measure of spreading, and is
defined, as a percentage, by: V

x

= (s

x

/

⎯x)100.

Sample vs. population
The pre-programmed functions for single-variable statistics used above can be
applied to a finite population by selecting the

Type: Population

in the

SINGLE-VARIABLE STATISTICS

screen. The main difference is in the values of

the variance and standard deviation which are calculated using n in the
denominator of the variance, rather than (n-1).

Example 3 -- If you were to repeat the exercise in Example 1 of this section,
using

Population

rather than

Sample

as the

Type

, you will get the same

values for the mean, total, maximum, and minimum. The variance and
standard deviation, however, will be given by: Variance: 0.852, Std Dev:
0.923.

Obtaining frequency distributions

The application

2. Frequencies..

in the STAT menu can be used to obtain

frequency distributions for a set of data. Again, the data must be present in the
form of a column vector stored in variable

ΣDAT. To get started, press

‚Ù˜ @@@OK@@@. The resulting input form contains the following fields:

ΣDAT

:

the matrix containing the data of interest.

Col

: the

column

of

ΣDAT that is under scrutiny.

X-Min

:

the minimum class boundary (default = -6.5).

Bin Count

:

the number of classes(default = 13).

Bin Width

:

the uniform width of each class (default = 1).

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