Data Matters with Fathom! Dynamic Statistics™ software

Activity 1.1

The project in Section 1.1 requires these four steps.

1. Open the software you are using.
2. Enter data for the last three U.S. presidents: name, political party, and gender.
3. Use your software to calculate the proportion of the three presidents who had each name, the proportion in each political party, and the proportion of each gender. Check that the steps you used produced valid answers.
4. Use your software to create a bar chart showing the proportions found in the last step. Check that the steps you used produced valid bar charts.

Here’s how to do each step.

Step 1: Open the software you are using.

Double-click the icon for Fathom (single-click if you’re on a Macintosh).

Step 2: Enter data for the last three U.S. presidents: name, political party, and gender.

At the top of the screen is a drawing of a box with an open lid. To its right is a drawing of something that looks a little like graph paper—it’s a drawing of what Fathom calls a case table. If you hold your cursor over the case table drawing, a box labeled New Case Table appears. Click on it, hold the mouse button down, and drag down. Release in the white space below.

Click on <new>. Type in the name of your first variable, Name, and press “Enter.” Repeat for the other two variables, Party and Gender.

Select, by clicking on it, the left-hand white rectangle, under Name. Type in the name of the first president in your data.

After you have typed in the name, press “Tab” to move to the next column and enter political party. Repeat to enter gender. Press “Enter” to move to the next row, where you can enter the name of the second president in your data.

Once all the data are entered, save your data by selecting File, then Save.

Step 3: Use your software to calculate the proportion of the three presidents who had each name, the proportion in each political party, and the proportion of each gender. Check that the steps you used produced valid answers.

Select Analyze, then Estimate Parameters. A new box appears. The label at its top says From Summary Statistics. In the box, select Empty Estimate, then Estimate Proportion.

For now you can ignore the text that appears.

Move your cursor back to your data. Click on the name of a variable to select it. Drag the variable to the From Summary Statistics box and over Attribute (categorical): <unassigned>. A thick black border will appear. Let go of the variable name.

Now the output in the From Summary Statistics box tells you about that variable.

Look at the output. The proportion is given as a decimal. There is a little more information than you are looking for just now, but you can probably find the proportion.

Fathom gives you the proportion for one of the values in that variable. To get the others, select that value, then the value you want proportions for.

Repeat these steps for the other two variables.

Step 4: Use your software to create a bar chart showing the proportions found in the last step. Check that the steps you used produced valid bar charts.

Select Insert, then Graph. A new box appears. At its top, it says No data. Select a variable name, and drag it to Drop an attribute name here. (“Attribute” is what Fathom calls a variable.) Release the attribute.

Double-click on Count ( ). A new box appears. Type proportion( . The close parenthesis will appear. Click OK.

Select another variable name, drag it to the bottom of the bar chart, and drop it.

Repeat for the last variable.

If you want, you can copy the charts by selecting Edit, then Copy Picture and pasting them into a Word document.