Consider you are conducting a poll asking people if they like chocolates. You record the data in the below format.
Poll on chocolates
If you now break down the data into age categories of (5 – 10 years), (10 – 15 years), and (15 – 20 years), and plot the number of people who liked and disliked chocolates then the table would look like below.
Two way frequency table
This type of table is called a two-way frequency table.
A two-way table is a statistical table that demonstrates the observed number or frequency for two variables, the rows indicate one category and the columns indicate the other category. Two-way frequency tables show how many data points fit in each category. The row category in this example is “5-10 years”, “10-15 years” and “15-20 years”. The column category is their choice “Like chocolates” or “Do not like chocolates”. Each cell tells us the number (or frequency) of the people.
There is a lot of information that we can get from this small table. For example,
How many people were questioned?
Answer: 10
How many people like chocolates?
Answer: 6
In which age group do people like chocolate the most?
Answer: 10 – 15
Let us now have a look at another example:
Example:
A survey of eighty people (40 men and 40 women) was taken on what genre of movie they would choose to watch, and the following responses were recorded:
- 8 men preferred comedy movies.
- 12 men preferred action movies.
- 14 men preferred horror movies.
- 16 women preferred comedy movies.
- 12 women preferred action movies.
- 6 women preferred horror movies.
The information collected is used to build the following two-way table:
Two-way Table
