GROUPED DATA
(Data Collection/Display)
Introduction:
• When dealing with large items in the data, we break
them into classes. The number of individual entries of
the data falling into a class is the class frequency.
• The top and bottom values of the classes are called class
limits. The top value is the upper–class limit and the
lower value is the lower class–limit.
• Frequency Distribution
The following example will illustrate how to obtain the
frequency distribution for grouped data.
Example: The following marks were scored by S.4 students
in a certain school.
50 53 31 56 38
33 39 51 38 41
69 57 63 50 54
40 41 45 48 64
59 61 55 36 52
Form a frequency distribution starting with 30 – 43as the
first class and using classes of equal length.
To draw up a frequency distribution table you need:
• Lower class and upper class boundary
a) For classes with no decimal places
• To get the lower class boundary, we subtract 0.5 from
lower class limit. For the class 30 – 43 above, the lower
class boundary = 30 – 0.5 = 29.5.
• To get the upper class boundary, we add 0.5 to the upper
class limit. For the class 30 – 34, its upper class
b) For classes with one decimal place
• To get the lower class boundary, we subtract 0.05 from the
lower class limit and to get the upper class boundary, we
add 0.05 to the upper class limit.
• Class marks
• This is the midpoint of the class limit. For the class 30 – 34, its class mark is
32, obtained as follows.
• Class size or class interval or class width.
Class width is the upper class boundary minus lower class
boundary. For the class 30 – 34, its class width is 5, obtained
as follows.
Class width 34.5 – 29.5 = 5
• We can now construct the frequency table for the above
marks.
• Example
The table below shows percentage marks gained in a
mathematics test.
43 40 49 80 76 46 60 55 58 55
75 79 70 83 82 56 67 63 67 63
69 53 73 61 48 58 60 75 73 69
77 62 66 54 53 63 73 49 59 78
• The Mode of Grouped Data
The mode of a set of data is the value that occurs most
frequently.
• Modal class:
This is the class with the highest frequency.
The mode of a grouped data is calculated from the formula
below:
Where,
L1 = Lower class boundary of modal class.
D1 = Difference between highest frequency and that
before it
D2 = Difference between the highest frequency and that
after it.
i = Class interval
• Quartiles
•These are quantities that divide a set of data
into four equal parts. The quartiles are:
• Lower quartile (Q1)
•This is a value that divides 25% way through
the distribution when the observations are
arranged in order of magnitude.
• The Mode of Grouped Data
• The mode of a set of data is the value that
occurs most frequently.
• Modal class:
• This is the class with the highest frequency.
• The mode of a grouped data is calculated from
the formula below:
• Where N = total number of observation
• Second quartile (Q2)
• This is the same as the median. It divides the observation
into two equal parts. I.e. it divides 5% 0f the distribution
when the distribution is arranged in order of magnitude.
Example
• Example
The table below shows the marks observed in
the end of year exams in mathematics by S.3
students of Mwenge Memorial School in 2023.
• Presentation of Data
Once data have been collected, they can be displayed in
various ways, which makes it easier to interpret and
compare the data. Below are some of the ways of
presenting data:
1. Bar charts
2. Pie charts
3. Histogram
4. Frequency polygon
5. Cumulative frequency curve (Orgive)
1. Bar chart ( Bar graph)
This is a graph where frequencies are plotted against class
limits. The shape of the graph appears as depicted below.
3. Histogram
• Using histogram to estimate the mode
• Mode can be estimated from the histogram as below:
i. Draw a histogram of the data.
ii. Identify the class with the highest frequency i.e. the
longest rectangle of the histogram.
iii. Join the corners of the rectangle of the modal class to
the corners of the adjacent rectangles opposite to these
corners of the rectangle of the modal class just as
illustrated below.
• Now where the two dotted lines meet; the value along
the class boundary (x–axis) corresponding to this point
gives the mode of the data.
Example 03
The table below shows the weight of S.4 students of
academic year 2021 in Dodoma Integrated S.S who went
for medical checkup at Fredica Hospital in Mazemngo.
a) Use the data recorded below to plot a histogram and
use it to estimate the modal weight.
b) What is the mean weight of these students?
4. Frequency Polygon
• Frequency polygon
This is obtained by plotting frequency against class
marks and then joining the consecutive points using a
straight line as sketched below
Frequency polygon
5. Cumulative frequency Curve
(Orgive)
• Cumulative frequency curve (Ogive)
This is obtained by plotting cumulative frequency
against upper class boundaries and then joining
the consecutive points using a smooth curve as
illustrated below.
Example 04.
The table below shows the weight of some patients
recorded from a certain health clinic.
