2.2.6 - Minitab: Central Tendency & Variability

2.2.6 - Minitab: Central Tendency & Variability

Minitab may be used to compute descriptive statistics for numeric variables, including the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and variance. 

Note that these are the default setting in Minitab:

Default descriptive statistics settings in Minitab 20

If you want additional statistics, such as the mode, variance, range, or interquartile range (IQR), you will need to select them in the Statistics window.

Minitab®  – Central Tendency

Central Tendency and Variability

This example will use data collected from a sample of students enrolled in online sections of STAT 200 during the Summer 2020 semester. These data can be downloaded as a CSV file:

To obtain measures of central tendency and variability in Minitab:

  1. Open the data set in Minitab 
  2. From the tool bar, select Stat > Basic Statistics > Display Descriptive Statistics...
  3. Double click the variable Online Courses Completed in the box on the left to insert it into the Variables box on the right
  4. Click on the Statistics button and select the descriptive statistics you want displayed (e.g., Variance, Interquartile range, Mode)
  5. Click OK
  6. Click OK

This should result in the following output:

Descriptive Statistics: Online Courses Completed
Statistics
Variable N N* Mean SE Mean StDev Variance Minimum Q1 Median Q3 Maximum IQR Mode N for Mode
Online Courses Completed 324 19 5.6975 0.4579 8.2429 67.945 0.0000 1.0000 3.0000 6.0000 70.0000 5.000 0 57
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