Outline:

UCLA Soc. 210A, Topic 3, Univariate Frequency Distributions and Summary Statistics

Professor: David D. McFarland

Web Pages for Fall 2000

• Syllabus for logistics
• ClassWeb site for announcements, discussion board
• Outline for course content

Topic 3: Univariate Frequency Distributions and Summary Statistics

• Assignment 3

In Topic 3 we revisit the staples of univariate descriptive statistics: frequency tables, histograms; summarization with mean and standard deviation, or median and other percentiles. But here they are done in the computer, on real data. And we focus on the appropriateness of various statistical procedures for various kinds of variables.

Univariate description in stata:

• Relatively "raw" data in (Case x variable) table
• Frequency table
• Histogram
• Stem and leaf (mention)
• Mean; standard deviation
• Median and other percentiles; interquartile range
• Box and whisker diagram
• Discussion of when to summarize, when not

• Western States handout
• GSS Main Codebook Pages
• GSS Codebook Appendices
• Selected stata commands