Working With Descriptive Statistics, Statistics Problem Example

For this exercise, I chose the following research question: What is the highest bench press among the different genders?  This is an interesting question for a number of reasons.  First, we might (reasonably) expect that males have a higher bench press (in total weight) than females.  Btu we do not know this to be true.  Secondly, we might be interested in the variance and range of weightlifting between the two sexes. In order to explore this question, I will present descriptive statistics and provide analysis regarding their interpretation.

Below is a chart of the basic descriptive statistics:

Table 1: Descriptive Statistics

As we can see from the descriptive statistics chart, on average, men are able to lift more than females by a substantial margin.  The range in the weight for men is also substantially more than it is for females.  This is not only shown by the variance, but also by the standard deviation in the chart above.

Table 2:  Data Histogram

Overall, I found a dramatic difference in the ability to bench press between men and women.  There is also a wide range in the ability to lift between men and women as illustrated in the differences in the histogram above.  Although there is not necessarily any new information provided in these charts, it is interesting the variance among the men in their ability to benchpress compared to the women.  Indeed, although there is a wide variance among the men in the ability to bench press, this is not necessarily the case for women.

Further, the histogram shows that some of the lifting may not be on the normal curve.  This may be because the distribution of the variable is not normal by nature, or it may mean that the sample is not large enough for this data set.  In any case, the findings from this data set are quite interesting and should be explored further.

References

Field, A. (2000). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS for Windows.  Boston: Sage Publications.

Cronk, B. (2012). SPSS Statistics: A step-by-step guide.  New York: Ingram.