Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel: Updated for Office 2007

Chapter 4 Describing Your Data 135

To interpret a frequency table that involves bins correctly, you need to

know which of these methods is used in calculating the counts. We’ll cre-

ate another frequency table of the housing prices in the workbook, this time

breaking the data down into 15 equally spaced bins.

To create a frequency table with bins:

1 Click Descriptive Statistics from the StatPlus menu and then click

Frequency Tables.

2 Click the Data Values button and select Price as the data variable.

Click OK.

3 Click the Create 15 equally spaced bins option button.

Note that the fi rst option button has been selected, so that counts can

be calculated for values that are ≥ the bin value and < the succeeding

bin value.

4 Click the Output button and click the New Worksheet option but-

ton. Type Price Table with Bins as the worksheet name and click the

OK button.

5 Click the OK button to start generating the frequency table with bins.

Figure 4-4 shows the resulting frequency table.

Figure 4-3
Counting
within a bin

Counted values are ≥

bin value and < next bin

value

Bin1 Bin2 Bin3 Bin4

Bin1 Bin2 Bin3 Bin4

Bin1 Bin2 Bin3 Bin4

Counted values are centered

around the bin value (mid-points

below the bin value are counted)

Counted values are £ bin

value and > previous bin value