4.4 Continuous data

Author

Affiliation

Vladimir Buskin

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

Suggested reading

Heumann et al. (2022: Chapter 3)

Preparation

We will use the dataset from the previous unit:

# Libraries
library("readxl")
library("tidyverse")

# Load data from working directory
cl.order <- read_xlsx("../datasets/Paquot_Larsson_2020_data.xlsx")

Measures of central tendency

From here on out, we assume \(X\) is a continuous random variable with observations \(\{x_1, x_2, ..., x_n\}\) and sample size \(n\). Measures of central tendency offer convenient one-value-summaries of the distribution of \(X\).

The sample mean

The sample mean \(\bar{x}\) is defined as

\[ \bar{x} = \frac{x_1 + x_2 + ... + x_n}{n} \\ = \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n{x_i}. \tag{1}\]

In R, we can obtain the average value of a numeric vector with the mean() function. Let’s do that for the length of main clauses found in the cl.order data:

mean(cl.order$LEN_MC)

[1] 9.265509

The output returned by this function provides a one-value summary of all observations contained in LEN_MC. Because the the mean \(\bar{x}\) takes into account all data points, it is prone to the influence of outliers, i.e., extreme values.

The distribution of continuous variables is best visualised in terms of histograms or density plots, which are illustrated for LEN_MC. The blue line indicates the sample mean.

Visualisation in R

Histogram (ggplot2)

# Plot distribution of LEN_MC
cl.length.hist <- ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = LEN_MC)) +
                  geom_histogram(binwidth = 2)

cl.length.hist +
  # Add mean
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC)),
             color = "steelblue",
             linewidth = 1) +
  theme_classic()

Density plot (ggplot2)

# Plot distribution of LEN_MC
cl.length.dens <- ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = LEN_MC)) +
                  geom_density()

cl.length.dens +
  # Add mean
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC)),
             color = "steelblue",
             linewidth = 1) +
  theme_classic()

Histogram (Base R)

hist(cl.order$LEN_MC)
  abline(v=mean(cl.order$LEN_MC),lwd=3, col = "steelblue")

Density plot (Base R)

plot(density(cl.order$LEN_MC))
  abline(v=mean(cl.order$LEN_MC),lwd=3, col = "steelblue")

The median

The median() function computes the “the halfway point of the data (50% of the data are above the median; 50% of the data are below” (Winter 2020: 58). As such, it is the measure of choice for data with many outliers as well as for ordinal data (e.g. Likert-scale ratings).

\[ \tilde{x}_{0.5} = \begin{cases} x_{((n+1)/2)} & \text{if } n \text{ is odd.} \\ \frac{1}{2}(x_{n/2}+x_{(n/2+1)}) & \text{if } n \text{ is even.} \end{cases} \tag{2}\]

median(cl.order$LEN_MC)

[1] 8

Visualisation in R

The median of LEN_MC is represented by the red vertical line.

Histogram (ggplot2)

cl.length.hist +
  # Add mean
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC)), color = "steelblue", linewidth = 1) +
  # Add median
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = median(LEN_MC)), color = "red", linewidth = 1) +
  theme_classic()

Density plot (ggplot2)

cl.length.dens +
  # Add mean
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC)), color = "steelblue", linewidth = 1) +
  # Add median
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = median(LEN_MC)), color = "red", linewidth = 1) +
  theme_classic()

Histogram (Base R)

hist(cl.order$LEN_MC)
  abline(v=mean(cl.order$LEN_MC),lwd=3, col = "steelblue")
  abline(v=median(cl.order$LEN_MC),lwd=3, col = "red")

Density plot (Base R)

plot(density(cl.order$LEN_MC))
  abline(v=mean(cl.order$LEN_MC),lwd=3, col = "steelblue")
  abline(v=mean(cl.order$LEN_MC),lwd=3, col = "red")

Sample variance and standard deviation

In order to assess how well the mean represents the data, it is instructive to compute the variance var() and the standard deviation sd() for a sample.

The unbiased sample variance \(s^2\) is defined as

\[ s^2 = \frac{1}{n-1}\sum_{i=1}^n{(x_i - \bar{x})^2}. \tag{3}\]

In other words, it represents for the average squared deviation of all observations from the sample mean.

var(cl.order$LEN_MC)

[1] 25.12585

Correspondingly, the standard deviation of the mean is the square root of the variance:

\[ s = \sqrt{s^2} \tag{4}\]

sd(cl.order$LEN_MC)

[1] 5.012569

Figure 1: Comparison of different parameter values

Visualisation in R

Example 1

cl.length.hist +
  # Add verticle line for the mean
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC)), color = "steelblue", linewidth = 1) +
  # Add -1sd
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC) - sd(LEN_MC)), color = "orange", linewidth = 1) +
  # Add +1sd
  geom_vline(aes(xintercept = mean(LEN_MC) + sd(LEN_MC)), color = "orange", linewidth = 1) +
  theme_classic()

Example 2

# Create data frame with mean and sd for each clause ORDER

cl.order %>% 
  # Select variables of interest
  select(ORDER, LEN_MC) %>% 
  # Group results of following operations by ORDER
  group_by(ORDER) %>% 
    # Create grouped summary of mean and sd for each ORDER
    summarise(mean = mean(LEN_MC),
                sd = sd(LEN_MC)) -> cl_mean_sd; cl_mean_sd

# A tibble: 2 × 3
  ORDER  mean    sd
  <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
1 mc-sc  9.04  4.91
2 sc-mc  9.75  5.22

# Plot results 

ggplot(cl_mean_sd, aes(x = ORDER, y = mean)) +
  # Barplot with a specific variable mapped onto y-axis
  geom_col() +
  # Add mean and standard deviation to the plot
  geom_errorbar(aes(x = ORDER,
                    ymin = mean-sd,
                    ymax = mean+sd), width = .2) +
  theme_classic() +
  labs(y = "Mean length of main clauses", x = "Clause order")

Quantiles

While median() divides the data into two equal sets (i.e., two 50% quantiles), the quantile() function makes it possible to partition the data further.

quantile(cl.order$LEN_MC)

  0%  25%  50%  75% 100% 
   2    6    8   11   31 

quantile(x, 0) and quantile(x, 1) thus show the minimum and maximum values, respectively.

quantile(cl.order$LEN_MC, 0)

0% 
 2 

quantile(cl.order$LEN_MC, 1)

100% 
  31 

Quartiles and boxplots

Consider the distribution of clause length by clause order:

Boxplot (Base R)

boxplot(LEN_MC ~ ORDER, cl.order)

Boxplot (ggplot2)

ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = ORDER, y = LEN_MC)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  theme_classic()

Compare it to the corresponding rotated density plot:

ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = LEN_MC, fill = ORDER)) +
  geom_density(alpha = 0.5) +
  coord_flip() +
  theme_classic()

Visualising mixed data

A numerical and categorical variable

• Boxplot with geom_boxplot()

ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = ORDER, y = LEN_MC)) +
  geom_boxplot()

• Densitiy plot using the optional arguments color and/or fill

ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = LEN_MC, fill = ORDER)) +
  geom_density(alpha = 0.5)

• A barplot with geom_col()

ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = ORDER, y = LEN_MC)) +
  geom_col(aes(x = ORDER, y = LEN_MC))

Multivariate plots

• Advanced scatterplot with four variables: LEN_MC (x), LEN_SC (y), ORDER (colour) and SUBORDTYPE (shape)

# 4 variables
ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = LEN_MC, y = LEN_SC)) +
  geom_point(aes(color = ORDER, shape = SUBORDTYPE))

• Facets

# 5 variables
ggplot(cl.order, aes(x = LEN_MC, y = LEN_SC)) +
  geom_point(aes(color = ORDER, shape = SUBORDTYPE)) +
  facet_wrap(~MORETHAN2CL)

References

Heumann, Christian, Michael Schomaker, and Shalabh. 2022. Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis: With Exercises, Solutions and Applications in r. 2nd ed. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11833-3.

Winter, Bodo. 2020. Statistics for Linguists: An Introduction Using r. New York; London: Routledge.