What is relative frequency and when might this be used? Provide an example of when you
use relative frequency. How can you use SPSS to find a frequency table that includes
relative frequency?
Relative frequency is the number of times in an experiment that an event occurs divided
by the total number of trials (Privitera, 2017). One might use relative frequency when they are
comparing categories. Relative frequency is put into charts to see then number of times an event
happens out of the total number conducted. Another reason relative frequency may be used is to
determine the chance or probability of an event occurring.
An example of relative frequency is a soccer game. Say you are looking for winning
frequency. You would take the total number of games won, let us say 10, and divide that by the
total number of games played. Let us say the team played 15 games. They won 10 of those
games. We would take 10/15 and get an answer of .667 as the relative frequency.
In SPSS you would click “File”, then click “New”, then click “Data”. After doing that
enter your data into the SPSS worksheet. After you have done that, you need to click “Analyze”,
then put your mouse over “Descriptive Statistics”, and then click “Frequencies”. After you do
these steps you need to click the “Display Frequency Tables”, check box and click “OK”. At this
point SPSS will then calculate the table and display the results.
Wendy Comstock
Privitera, G. (2017). Statistics for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
ISBN-13: 9781544349343 https://www.gcumedia.com/digital-resources/sage/2017/statistics-for-
the-behavioral-sciences-with-webassign_3e.php
How to Make an SPSS Frequency Table. (2018, June 24) Retrieved from
https://www.statisticshowto.com/how-to-make-an-spss-frequency-table
use relative frequency. How can you use SPSS to find a frequency table that includes
relative frequency?
Relative frequency is the number of times in an experiment that an event occurs divided
by the total number of trials (Privitera, 2017). One might use relative frequency when they are
comparing categories. Relative frequency is put into charts to see then number of times an event
happens out of the total number conducted. Another reason relative frequency may be used is to
determine the chance or probability of an event occurring.
An example of relative frequency is a soccer game. Say you are looking for winning
frequency. You would take the total number of games won, let us say 10, and divide that by the
total number of games played. Let us say the team played 15 games. They won 10 of those
games. We would take 10/15 and get an answer of .667 as the relative frequency.
In SPSS you would click “File”, then click “New”, then click “Data”. After doing that
enter your data into the SPSS worksheet. After you have done that, you need to click “Analyze”,
then put your mouse over “Descriptive Statistics”, and then click “Frequencies”. After you do
these steps you need to click the “Display Frequency Tables”, check box and click “OK”. At this
point SPSS will then calculate the table and display the results.
Wendy Comstock
Privitera, G. (2017). Statistics for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
ISBN-13: 9781544349343 https://www.gcumedia.com/digital-resources/sage/2017/statistics-for-
the-behavioral-sciences-with-webassign_3e.php
How to Make an SPSS Frequency Table. (2018, June 24) Retrieved from
https://www.statisticshowto.com/how-to-make-an-spss-frequency-table
