EXAMPLE 10 Frequency and relative frequency distributions using classes

Combine the data from Table 18 into three classes, and construct frequency and relative frequency distributions.

Solution

Let us define the following classes for the numbers of multi-platinum records:

  • 1–3 Multi-platinums
  • 4–6 Multi-platinums
  • 7–9 Multi-platinums

For each class, we group together all the musical artists in the class. Table 19 provides the frequency distribution and relative frequency distribution for these three classes.

Table 2.46: TABLE 19 Frequency distribution and relative frequency distribution of Multi-platinums, after combining into classes
Class Frequency Relative frequency
1–3 12
4–6 5
7–9 3
Total 20

62

The class with the highest frequency (and therefore highest relative frequency) is the class with 1–3 multi-platinum singles: 12, or 60% of the total. Therefore, we can say that most of the artists in our sample had between one and three multi-platinum singles.

NOW YOU CAN DO

Exercises 13–16.