Measures of center

Introduction to Statistics in Python

Maggie Matsui

Content Developer, DataCamp

Mammal sleep data

print(msleep)

                 name       genus   vore         order  ... sleep_cycle  awake  brainwt   bodywt
1             Cheetah    Acinonyx  carni     Carnivora  ...         NaN   11.9      NaN   50.000
2          Owl monkey       Aotus   omni      Primates  ...         NaN    7.0  0.01550    0.480
3     Mountain beaver  Aplodontia  herbi      Rodentia  ...         NaN    9.6      NaN    1.350
4 Greater short-ta...     Blarina   omni  Soricomorpha  ...    0.133333    9.1  0.00029    0.019
5                 Cow         Bos  herbi  Artiodactyla  ...    0.666667   20.0  0.42300  600.000
..                ...         ...    ...           ...  ...         ...    ...      ...      ...
79         Tree shrew      Tupaia   omni    Scandentia  ...    0.233333   15.1  0.00250    0.104
80 Bottle-nosed do...    Tursiops  carni       Cetacea  ...         NaN   18.8      NaN  173.330
81              Genet     Genetta  carni     Carnivora  ...         NaN   17.7  0.01750    2.000
82         Arctic fox      Vulpes  carni     Carnivora  ...         NaN   11.5  0.04450    3.380
83            Red fox      Vulpes  carni     Carnivora  ...    0.350000   14.2  0.05040    4.230

Histograms

How long do mammals in this dataset typically sleep?

What's a typical value?

Where is the center of the data?

Mean
Median
Mode

Screen Shot 2020-07-02 at 11.01.16 AM.png

Measures of center: mean

                  name  sleep_total
1              Cheetah         12.1
2           Owl monkey         17.0
3      Mountain beaver         14.4
4   Greater short-t...         14.9
5                  Cow          4.0
..                 ...          ...

$\text{Mean sleep time}=$

$$\frac{12.1 + 17.0 + 14.4 + 14.9 + ...}{83} = 10.43$$

import numpy as np
np.mean(msleep['sleep_total'])

10.43373

Measures of center: median

msleep['sleep_total'].sort_values()

msleep['sleep_total'].sort_values().iloc[41]

10.1

np.median(msleep['sleep_total'])

10.1

Measures of center: mode

Most frequent value

msleep['sleep_total'].value_counts()

12.5    4
10.1    3
14.9    2
11.0    2
8.4     2
...
14.3    1
17.0    1
Name: sleep_total, Length: 65, dtype: int64

msleep['vore'].value_counts()

herbi      32
omni       20
carni      19
insecti     5
Name: vore, dtype: int64

import statistics
statistics.mode(msleep['vore'])

'herbi'

Adding an outlier

# Subset msleep to select rows where 'vore' equals 'insecti'
msleep[msleep['vore'] == 'insecti']

                     name         genus     vore         order  sleep_total
22          Big brown bat     Eptesicus  insecti    Chiroptera         19.7
43       Little brown bat        Myotis  insecti    Chiroptera         19.9
62        Giant armadillo    Priodontes  insecti     Cingulata         18.1
67  Eastern american mole      Scalopus  insecti  Soricomorpha          8.4

Adding an outlier

msleep[msleep['vore'] == "insecti"]['sleep_total'].agg([np.mean, np.median])

mean      16.53
median    18.9
Name: sleep_total, dtype: float64

Adding an outlier

msleep[msleep['vore'] == 'insecti']

                     name         genus     vore         order  sleep_total
22          Big brown bat     Eptesicus  insecti    Chiroptera         19.7
43       Little brown bat        Myotis  insecti    Chiroptera         19.9
62        Giant armadillo    Priodontes  insecti     Cingulata         18.1
67  Eastern american mole      Scalopus  insecti  Soricomorpha          8.4

84    Mystery insectivore            ... insecti           ...          0.0

Adding an outlier

msleep[msleep['vore'] == "insecti"]['sleep_total'].agg([np.mean, np.median])

mean      13.22
median    18.1
Name: sleep_total, dtype: float64

Mean: 16.5 → 13.2

Median: 18.9 → 18.1

Which measure to use?

# Import matplotlib.pyplot with alias plt
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Histogram of values
data['values'].hist()

# Show the plot
plt.show()

symmetrical data histogram

Skew

Left-skewed

Histogram of data with few values on the left, increasing to more values on the right.

Right-skewed

Histogram of data with many values on the left, decreasing to few values on the right.

Which measure to use?

Histogram of data with few values on the left, increasing to more values on the right.

Histogram of data with many values on the left, decreasing to few values on the right.

Let's practice!

Introduction to Statistics in Python