Alicia has been asked to approve a marketing campaign that

Chapter Opening Exercise A representative exercise opens the chapter and shows how the chapter content can be applied to a real-world situation.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES When you have completed this chapter, you will be able to:

LO2-1 Summarize qualitative variables with frequency and relative frequency tables.

LO2-2 Display a frequency table using a bar or pie chart.

LO2-3 Summarize quantitative variables with frequency and relative frequency distributions.

LO2-4 Display a frequency distribution using a histogram or frequency polygon.

MERRILL LYNCH recently completed a study of online investment portfolios for a sample of clients. For the 70 participants in the study, organize these data into a frequency distribution. (See Exercise 43 and LO2-3.)

Describing Data: FREQUENCY TABLES, FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS,

AND GRAPHIC PRESENTATION2

Source: © rido/123RF

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Introduction to the Topic Each chapter starts with a review of the important concepts of the previ- ous chapter and provides a link to the material in the current chapter. This step-by-step approach increases com- prehension by providing continuity across the concepts.

DESCRIBING DATA: FREQUENCY TABLES, FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS, AND GRAPHIC PRESENTATION 19

INTRODUCTION The United States automobile retailing industry is highly competitive. It is dominated by megadealerships that own and operate 50 or more franchises, employ over 10,000 people, and generate several billion dollars in annual sales. Many of the top dealerships

are publicly owned with shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. In 2014, the largest megadealership was AutoNation (ticker symbol AN), followed by Penske Auto Group (PAG), Group 1 Automotive, Inc. (ticker symbol GPI), and the privately owned Van Tuyl Group.

These large corporations use statistics and analytics to summarize and analyze data and information to support their decisions. As an ex- ample, we will look at the Applewood Auto group. It owns four dealer- ships and sells a wide range of vehicles. These include the popular Korean brands Kia and Hyundai, BMW and Volvo sedans and luxury SUVs, and a full line of Ford and Chevrolet cars and trucks.

Ms. Kathryn Ball is a member of the senior management team at Applewood Auto Group, which has its corporate offices adjacent to Kane Motors. She is responsible for tracking and analyzing vehicle sales and

the profitability of those vehicles. Kathryn would like to summarize the profit earned on the vehicles sold with tables, charts, and graphs that she would review monthly. She wants to know the profit per vehicle sold, as well as the lowest and highest amount of profit. She is also interested in describing the demographics of the buyers. What are their ages? How many vehicles have they previously purchased from one of the Apple- wood dealerships? What type of vehicle did they purchase?

The Applewood Auto Group operates four dealerships:

• Tionesta Ford Lincoln sells Ford and Lincoln cars and trucks. • Olean Automotive Inc. has the Nissan franchise as well as the General Motors

brands of Chevrolet, Cadillac, and GMC Trucks. • Sheffield Motors Inc. sells Buick, GMC trucks, Hyundai, and Kia. • Kane Motors offers the Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep line as well as BMW and Volvo.

Every month, Ms. Ball collects data from each of the four dealerships and enters them into an Excel spreadsheet. Last month the Applewood Auto Group sold 180 vehicles at the four dealerships. A copy of the first few observations appears to the left. The variables collected include:

• Age—the age of the buyer at the time of the purchase. • Profit—the amount earned by the dealership on the sale of each

vehicle. • Location—the dealership where the vehicle was purchased. • Vehicle type—SUV, sedan, compact, hybrid, or truck. • Previous—the number of vehicles previously purchased at any of the

four Applewood dealerships by the consumer.

The entire data set is available at the McGraw-Hill website (www.mhhe .com/lind17e) and in Appendix A.4 at the end of the text.

Source: © Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

CONSTRUCTING FREQUENCY TABLES Recall from Chapter 1 that techniques used to describe a set of data are called descrip- tive statistics. Descriptive statistics organize data to show the general pattern of the data, to identify where values tend to concentrate, and to expose extreme or unusual data values. The first technique we discuss is a frequency table.

LO2-1 Summarize qualitative variables with frequency and relative frequency tables.

FREQUENCY TABLE A grouping of qualitative data into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive classes showing the number of observations in each class.

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Example/Solution After important concepts are introduced, a solved example is given. This example provides a how-to illustration and shows a relevant business application that helps students answer the question, “How can I apply this concept?”

DESCRIBING DATA: DISPLAYING AND EXPLORING DATA 95

INTRODUCTION Chapter 2 began our study of descriptive statistics. In order to transform raw or un- grouped data into a meaningful form, we organize the data into a frequency distribution. We present the frequency distribution in graphic form as a histogram or a frequency polygon. This allows us to visualize where the data tend to cluster, the largest and the smallest values, and the general shape of the data.