histograms - frequency and relative frequency?

[confusedstudent]

Hi,

I'd like to start by thanking everyone in advance for helping students
like me.

I have a problem I'm working on for class and it goes something like
this:

"The salaries (in hundreds of dollars) of a sample of 40 government
employees are as follows:

208 160 175 ...
265
173
...

Construct both a frequency histogram (vanilla) and a relative frequency
histogram (chocolate). Hint: use six bins."

Now I've enabled the "Data Analysis" feature, but i'm assuming I need
to add some function to enable the frequency thing?

I apologize for being so lost - I'm trying!

Thanks people!

 

[Biff]

Hi!

i'm assuming I need to add some function
to enable the frequency thing?

The frequencies are calculated and are output in the histogram.

Assume your data is in the range A1:B5

Bins are in the range C1:C10

Goto Tools>Data Analysis
Select Histogram
Fill in the user form
OK

Don't know what is meant by a frequency histogram and a relative frequency
histogram.

Biff

"confusedstudent"

 

[Guest]

Don't know what is meant by a frequency histogram and a
relative frequency histogram.

In the first case, the y-axis is the frequency represented by each
bin, as you might be used to. In the second case, the y-axis is
the percentage of the total in each bin-- the bin frequency divided
by the sum of the frequencies (total number of data).

Two distributions can have the same relative frequency
histogram, but different frequency histograms. For example,
consider a uniform distribution of 1000 data and 10000 data
over 10 bins. In the frequency histogram, the y-axis is 100
and 1000 respectively. In the relative frequency histogram,
the y-axis is 0.1 in both cases.