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PAGE
THREE
A Basic
Guide to Statistics
by Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D.
Graphic
Representation
Graphic representation is often of great help in
enabling us to understand the essential features of
frequency distributions and in comparing one
frequency distribution with another.
A graph is a geometrical image of a set
of data, a mathematical picture if you will. We can
think about a problem in visual terms. Many
problems can be reduced to visual form. These
visual forms are often presented to us in the media
to help us in understanding a set of measurements,
a group of statistical data.
We will consider here only a few of the more
common types of graphic representations.
The
Histogram
The histogram is a graph in which the
frequencies are represented by area in the form of
bars. The diagram below shows you an example of one
such histogram and explains its parts.

The Frequency
Polygon
The frequency polygon is a graph in which the
frequencies are represented by straight lines
connecting points located above the midpoints of
the intervals at heights corresponding to the
frequencies. The diagram below shows you an example
of one such frequency polygon and explains its
parts.
The Cumulative
Frequency Polygon
The drawing of a cumulative frequency polygon
differs from that of a frequency polygon in two
respects.
First, instead of plotting points corresponding
to frequencies, we plot points corresponding to
cumulative frequencies.
Second, instead of plotting points above the
midpoint of each interval, we plot our points above
the top of the exact limits of the interval.
This is done because we want our graph to
visually represent the number of observations
falling above or below particular values.
The diagram below shows you an example of a
cumulative frequency polygon and explains its
parts.
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