Descriptive Statistics Output from Statistical Analysis Software

Statistical analysis software routines can analyze the raw data for the mileage ratings for the 49
vehicles in our demonstration data set. Your textbook includes 2 software packages: Visual
Statistics and MegaStat. MegaStat is an Excel add-in package a series of small programs
written to add into Excel. MegaStat cant run without Excel. Visual Statistics is a so-called stand
alone package you dont need to have any other software to run it.
There are dozens of statistical software packages on the market. The most comprehensive (and
expensive) ones are SPSS and SAS. Both SPSS and SAS have student versions that are quite
inexpensive but have limited functionality. Many companies and most universities have these
packages available you should ask around to see if one of these packages is available at your
workplace. Your textbook also refers to Minitabanother software package commonly
available at educational institutions.
Most people are not aware of the statistical analysis capabilities of Excel. There is actually a
small but useful package of statistical functions included in Excel. You do, however, have to have
a so-called full or complete installation of Excel to have these capabilities available. Excels
statistical functions are not loaded automatically you have to locate them and indicate that you
want them to be activated. If you are unable to do this, please notify the instructor. Sometimes
the activation is very easy. In other instances, you may have to re-install Excel or request
assistance from your system administrator at your place of work.
Visual Statistics
The Descriptive Statistics output from Visual Statistics for the mileage data appears below. Ive
color-coded some of the major sections of the output.
Visual Statistics
Output
Var = Mileage
Observations = 50
Low = 29.8
High = 33.3
No Outliers

Mean = 31.56
Median = 31.55
Midrange = 31.55
Midhinge = 31.54
5% Trim Mean = 31.56

Quartile 1 = 30.95
Quartile 2 = 31.55
Quartile 3 = 32.13
Std Dev = 0.7977
Coef of Var = 2.5%

Skewness = -0.07 (p=.82)

Kurtosis = 2.39 (p=.38)
64% within 1 SD
96% within 2 SD
100% within 3 SD

Compare the values you obtained from your spreadsheet analyses and the values shown in the
textbook with the information in this output. Note: to find out how to run this analysis, please
refer to the Visual Statistics program.
The values in gray enable you to determine the range of values in the data set. The values in
pink are the mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation. Some important iles are
shown in blue. The information in yellow relates to the Empirical Rule. The midrange and
midhinge values are referred to in the texts section on Box & Whiskers plots but we wont be
using these values in this course.
The information about skewness and kurtosis in green enables you to determine if the distribution
of mileage ratings is symmetrical or not and what the nature of the clustering of data in the

distribution is. Visual Statistics is better than the other software packages in this regard because
it not only gives you values for statistical indices describing skewness and kurtosis but ALSO
provides a way to interpret these values. In parentheses after the values for skewness and
kurtosis are p values. In this instance, p stands for probability. If there is notable skewness
or kurtosis in the data, the p values for the indices will be smaller than .05. Here, the p values
exceed .05 so there is no notable skewness or kurtosis in the data. The distribution is relatively
(though not perfectly) symmetrical and there is no notable leptokurtosis or platykurtosis.
Excel
Appendix 3.2 in your text provides a detailed step through for setting up Descriptive Statistics in
Excel.
Here is the output for our mileage data.
Mean
Standard Error
Median
Mode
Standard
Deviation
Sample Variance
Kurtosis
Skewness
Range
Minimum
Maximum
Sum
Count

31.56
0.11281193
31.55
31.4
0.79770078
0.63632653
-0.5399624
-0.0719173
3.5
29.8
33.3
1578
50

How does this output compare with that of Visual Statistics? Ive followed the same color-coding
scheme to demonstrate the comparison.
Notice that the values for the index for kurtosis are different. Thats because there are several
different measures of skewness and kurtosis. In general, if the absolute value of the skewness
index is less than .50 and the absolute value of the kurtosis index is less than 1.0, you can
conclude that there is no significant skewness or kurtosis in the data.
Except for the median (P50), Excel doesnt give you information about any iles. For that, you
need to use the percentile function (described in the More About Percentiles document).
Excel also does not provide any handy output associated with the Empirical Rule.
MegaStat
Remember that MegaStat is an Excel add-in that piggy-backs on Excel. When you activate the
Descriptive Statistics routine with MegaStat, you can choose what information you want to include
in the output. You can try checking various options. Here is some sample output for our mileage
data.
count
mean
sample variance
sample standard deviation

50
31.560
0.636
0.798

minimum
maximum
range
empirical rule
mean - 1s
mean + 1s
percent in interval
(68.26%)
mean - 2s
mean + 2s
percent in interval
(95.44%)
mean - 3s
mean + 3s
percent in interval
(99.73%)

29.8
33.3
3.5

30.762
32.358
64.0%
29.965
33.155
96.0%
29.167
33.953
100.0%

skewness
kurtosis
coefficient of variation (CV)

-0.072
-0.540
2.53%

1st quartile
median
3rd quartile
interquartile range
mode

31.000
31.550
32.100
1.100
31.400

low extremes
low outliers
high outliers
high extremes

0
0
0
0

Again, Ive color-coded some of the output.

The Bottom Line
Remember the old expression: Different Strokes for Different Folks ? Statistical software is like
that. There is no single statistical software package that is best. Fortunately, there are enough
choices around so that you can select the combination of features that you need for a given
situation.
To make matters even more interesting, if youve explored the link to statistics.com you can see
that lots of people have been very busy developing little software applications for doing various
statistical tasks.