Week 1 - PPT

Question 1

What is Data?

Answer 1

Data can be defined as a collection of numbers, characters, words and text in a raw or organised format to represent facts or information

Question 2

What is numerical data?

Answer 2

Values that represent measured or counted quantities as a number and are also called quantitative data

Question 3

What is discrete data?

Answer 3

numerical values that result from a counting process e.g the profit a business makes each month

Question 4

What is continuous data?

Answer 4

Data that can be measured and can take on any numerical value in a specific range of values e.g Height, weight, temperature and length - they can all change over time

Question 5

What is nominal data?

Answer 5

Categorical values that are not amenable to being organised in a logical order e.g male/female, names of people

Question 6

What is categorical data?

Answer 6

Values that describe a quality or characteristic of a group of observations and therefore can be used as labels to divide a dataset into groups e.g hair colour, political affiliation

Question 7

What is ordinal data?

Answer 7

Categorical values that can be logically ordered and ranked e.g S&P’s star ratings for investment funds

Question 8

What is cross-sectional data?

Answer 8

List of the observations of a specific variable from multiple observational units at a given point in time e.g January inflation rates for each of the euro-area countries

Question 9

What is time-series data

Answer 9

A collection of data points recorded at regular intervals over a period of time. The order of the data points is important because it helps identify patterns, trends, and seasonal variations e.g closing prices of a particular stock

Question 10

What is panel-data?

Answer 10

Mix of time series and cross sectional data that are frequently used in financial analysis and modeling e.g quarterly earnings per share for three companies in a given year by quarter

Question 11

What is the best graphical presentation for categorial variables?

Answer 11

• Frequency distribution
• Cross table
• Bar chart
• Pie chart
• Pareto diagram

Question 12

What is the best graphical presentation numerical variables

Answer 12

• Line chart
• Frequency distribution
• Histogram and ogive
• Stem and leaf display
• Scatter plot

Question 13

What are cross tables?

Answer 13

a tool used to show the relationship between two or more variables

Question 14

What is a pie chart?

Answer 14

• Often used for qualitative data
• The size of the pie chart shows the percentage of each category

Question 15

What is a pareto diagram?

Answer 15

• Used to portray categorical data
• A bar chart, where categories are shown in descending order of frequency
• A cumulative polygon is often shown in the sam graph
• Used to separate the vital few from the trivial many

Question 16

What is frequency distribution?

Answer 16

Frequency distribution is a list or table containing class groupings and the responding frequencies which data fall within each class or category

Question 17

Class intervals and class boundaries

Answer 17

• Each class grouping has the same length
• Determine the width of each interval by max(x) - min(x) / h
• h is the desired number of intervals

Question 18

What is a histogram?

Answer 18

• A graph of data in a frequency distribution is called a histogram
• The interval end-points are shown on the horizontal axis
• The vertical axis is either frequency, relative frequency, or percentage
• Bars of the appropriate heights are used to represent the number of observations in each class

Question 19

What is a scatter diagram?

Answer 19

• They are used for paired observations taken from numerical variables
• One variable is measured on the vertical axis and the other is measured on the horizontal axis