Exercise: Histogram of FEV1 data

The file fev.sav contains the 57 FEV1 measurements used in the lecture.

Download the file and read it into SPSS. (If you single click the file, you should get options either to save the file to disk or to start SPSS.)

Questions

1. Using SPSS, produce a histogram of FEV1. Compare it to the one used in the lecture.

Check suggested answer 1.

2. Edit the graph to make the text bigger on the horizontal axis.

  1. Double left click the graph to start the Chart Editor.
  2. Double click on one of the numbers along the horizontal axis. This will bring up a Properties box.
  3. Click Text Style
  4. Change Preferred Size to 16.
  5. Apply
  6. Close

Check suggested answer 2.

3. Edit the graph to make all the axis labels bigger.

Check suggested answer 3.

4. Edit the graph to change the intervals for the histogram.

  1. Double left click the graph to start the Chart Editor.
  2. Double click on one of the bars of the histogram. This will bring up a Properties box.
  3. Click Binning
  4. Click radio button for Custom
  5. Change Custom value for anchor to 2.5. (This is the start of the first interval)
  6. Change Interval Width to 0.5
  7. Apply
  8. Close

Check suggested answer 4.

5. Change the colour of the bars.

  1. Double left click the graph to start the Chart Editor.
  2. Double click on one of the bars of the histogram. This will bring up a Properties box.
  3. Click Fill & Border
  4. Change Fill colour to whatever you find pleasing.
  5. Change Border colour to whatever you find pleasing.
  6. Double click on the background.
  7. Change Fill colour to whatever you find pleasing.

Check suggested answer 5.

6. Remove the text on the right, about the mean and sample size. To do this,

  1. Double left click the graph to start the Chart Editor.
  2. Single click on the text to be deleted to select it.
  3. Now right click on the text to be deleted. Another Properties window will appear, which includes a Delete option.
  4. Click the Delete option.

Check suggested answer 6.

7. Find the minimum, maximum, median, and other quartiles. (Hint: use Frequencies).

Check suggested answer 7.

8. Draw a box and whisker plot of the distribution.

Check suggested answer 8.

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This page maintained by Martin Bland.
Last updated: 16 January, 2012.

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