Nownes (2000) surveyed representatives of interest groups who were registered as

Question

Nownes (2000) surveyed representatives of interest groups who were registered as lobbyists of three U.S. state legislatures. One of the issues he studied was whether interest groups are in competition with each other. Table 1–10 shows the results for one such question. (a) Using this table as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never had a course in statistics. (b) Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results.

TABLE 1–10 Competition for Members and Other Resources
Question: How much competition does this group
face from other groups with similar goals for
members and other resources?
Answer Percentage Number
No competition |20| 118|
Some competition |58| 342|
A lot of competition |22| 131|
Total |100| 591|

Explanation / Answer

A frequency table displays the results of a sample or survey of results in an easy to read table format. The first column in the table describes the group. In this case, the groups are No Competition, Some Competition, and A Lot Of Competition.

The next column tells you the percentage of the samples or those surveyed fall within that category. In this case, 20% feel that there is no competition, 58% feel that there is some competition, and 22% feel that there is a lot of competition.

The last column tells us the actual number of samples or those surveyed in each category. For this problem, there was 118 that said there is no competition, 342 that said there some competition, and 131 that said there is no competition.

Now each of these columns are totaled at the bottom. The percentages should all add to 100% and then the second total tells you the total number of samples or those surveyed.

The pattern of results (if you were to graph them) shows exactly how the data is distributed.  It says that most people agree that there is some competition and then there are almost equal amounts of people that think there is no competiton or a lot of competition. As a side note: if you were to actually graph them, it would look vaguely like a normal distribution curve where there are a lot of samples in the middle and less on each tail.

Well I hope this helps answer your question. If you a little different explanation and viewpoint on what a frequency table if check out the Wikipedia site. It has some good info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_distribution

Good luck!

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