b) Imagine that you want to compare the frequency distributions for males and females separately (on some variable), and there are considerably more females than males. Which would you concentrate on-the original frequencies or the relative frequencies? Why? Provide an illustration to support

Answer 1

I would concentrate on the relative frequencies in this scenario. This is because when comparing frequencies for males and females separately, having considerably more females than males can skew the results and make it difficult to directly compare the two groups based on their original frequencies.

By using relative frequencies, we are able to see the proportion of males and females within each category, which can provide a more accurate comparison between the two groups. For example, let's say we are looking at the distribution of favorite colors among a group of 100 individuals, with 80 females and 20 males. If we only look at the original frequencies, it may appear that females overwhelmingly prefer the color blue compared to males. However, when we look at the relative frequencies, we might find that 30% of females and 25% of males prefer the color blue, indicating a more balanced comparison between the two groups.

Therefore, focusing on relative frequencies allows us to account for the different sample sizes of males and females, making it easier to accurately compare the distributions for each group.