One-Way Frequency Tables

Abstract

The simplest frequency tables concern a single variable and show the frequencies with which the various categories of that variable have been observed. Here, we shall be interested in frequency tables where the variable may be nominal, discrete, or continuous, but where the only assumption is that of a multinomial distribution. In those cases where the categories refer to some continuous measure, such as income, length of employment, etc. or are themselves counts, such as numbers of accidents per individual, number of children per family, etc., specific probability distributions can often be fitted to the data. However, this latter problem is not the subject of the present book.