Difference between revisions of "Documentation/Writer for Students/Cross Tables"

Revision as of 12:59, 9 June 2014

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Apache OpenOffice Calc is perhaps not in league with specialised statistics’ programmes like SPSS or its very recommendable cost free and open source alternative PSPP. Nevertheless you can use it for statistical purposes, one of the most popular being Cross Tables to illustrate the (presumed) dependency of one variable upon another.

Example of survey using two categories and percentages

In a fictional survey we asked 12 people, men and women, to tell us on a scale from 1 to 10 how much they abhorred violent videos. The aim was to see if there is any significant variance between women and men. The raw results are listed in table 4 and the dependencies in cross table 5.

Table 4: Degree of aversion amongst men and women towards violent videos

Table 5: Same data as above in form of cross table showing that women reject violent videos to a greater degree than men (or pretend to do so)

To obtain the summary as displayed in table 5 do the following:

Illustration 30: After having dragged the two buttons “Sex” and “Level of …” into their appropriate fields, go to Options and choose Average

1. Mark the two columns of interest, i.e. “sex” and “extent of rejection” in the raw data table 4, copy them into memory, go to the module Spreadsheet (menu File › New › Spreadsheet) and there insert the contents of computer memory using shortcut Ctrl + v.
2. In your spreadsheet again mark the two columns and go to menu Data › DataPilot › Start › Current selection.
3. Drag and drop the button Sex onto the white area Row Fields and Level of rejection… onto the white area Data Fields; press Options and choose Average; confirm OK and again OK (see illustration 30).
4. Your new cross table now appears on your spreadsheet.
5. Mark it and go to menu Format › Cells › Numbers › -1234 with Decimal

place value 0 and Leading zero value 1; confirm with OK (see illustration 31). This way you will avoid decimal places.

1. Copy your newly formatted cross table into computer memory (Ctrl + c).
2. Back to your text file insert the contents (as opposed to a direct image) of the cross table using menu Edit › Paste Special › Formatted text [RTF] (or keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + v and not simply Ctrl + v)
3. You can now freely format your newly inserted table.
4. Finally right click it and add a Legend.

Illustration 31: The number of decimal places is reduced to 1

Example of survey involving yes/no answers

If it had been a Yes/No survey, for example to the question “are you mainly right or left handed?”, as in table 7, then you’d do the following:

1. Copy the two right columns “sex” and “handedness” from the raw data in table 7 into memory and insert them into your spreadsheet.
2. In your spreadsheet again mark these same two columns and go to the menu Data › DataPilot › Start and confirm Current Selection.
3. Drag & Drop the button “Sex” onto the white area Row Fields.
4. Drag & Drop the button “Handedness” onto the white area Column Fields and also onto the white area Data Fields.
5. Under Options choose Count instead of Sum and press More and there choose as Type the option % of row.
6. Copy the resulting Cross Table into computer memory.
7. Back in your text file insert the contents of computer memory using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + v and choose the option Formatted text [RTF] (so as to obtain a formatable table)

Table 6: Cross table comparison as to handedness dependent on sex

Table 7: Right- and Left-Handedness and Sex (raw data)

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