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Questions tagged [relative-distribution]

Relative distribution methods, plots and decompositions, as discussed in Mark S. Handcock and Martina Morris: Relative Distribution Methods in the Social Sciences (Springer).

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Sampled vs population relative frequency distribution

Assume I have a real count of people by city, and I have 4 cities, A,B,C,D (for simplicity), and the people distribute 30%, 30%, 25%, 15% respectively. I also have a sample of this population, which ...
HermanK's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
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How to deal with ratios when the denominator varies greatly?

I have a dataset with the number of businesses, e.g. bakeries or doctors, in some towns and cities. I want to calculate the relative distribution of certain professions, but as the population size ...
user3240855's user avatar
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1 answer
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What does a ratio of PDFs mean?

In searching for an answer I came across this about the pdf/cdf ratio but I would like to know if there is any meaning, name or supporting theory relating to the ratio of two pdf values, the numerator ...
PM.'s user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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How to compare two datasets in terms of density?

I have two 1-D datasets (A: 300,000 points and B: 30,000 points) representing genetic events along the human genome (size: 3 billions "points"). I know that A and B are not uniformly ...
Nicolas Rosewick's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
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Estimation of Distributions with Fat Tails

I work on estimation of income distributions. When I have very high inequality situation I have these two options: Estimate a conventional distribution (e.g. generalize beta) where the parameters go ...
user41838's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
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Compare two distributions of large sizes and unequal variances where one distribution is heavily skewed

My data is from cells that are treated under two different conditions and then their response to the condition is measured by one output variable. The cell populations in the two conditions are quite ...
joelostblom's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
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How to arrive at a specific formulation of the relative median deviation?

I am an economist currently working with this book: Frank Cowell - Measuring Inequality On page 25 a formulation of the relative mean deviation is given as follows: $$ M = 2 \left[ F\left(\bar{y}\...
option_select's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
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How to qualitatively describe distribution shapes

I have a distribution which looks a bit binomial, though with a cutoff, i.e.: $P(x) = 0$ if $x \le 0$, rises to a bell-shaped peak at around $x=0.2%$, appears to tail off exponentially until an ...
Sideshow Bob's user avatar
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How can I group numerical data into naturally forming "brackets"? (e.g. income)

The following describes what I'm trying to accomplish, but it's possible an alternative problem statement can describe my goal: I want to divide the following numbers into groups where the ...
makerofthings7's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

Relative density plots in R

I have a dataset with two classes, A and B, and an independent variable x. Class B is a minority class with only 1% of the observations, which tend to occur with small values of x. I am interested in ...
roelandvanbeek's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
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Calculating Gini coefficient with unbound income brackets?

I need to compute the Gini coefficient on some population data arranged in income brackets: for example $0->$1000 : 10000 people $1000->$10000: 50000 people ...
Warwick Masson's user avatar
6 votes
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Are sample means for quantiles of sorted data unbiased estimators of the true means?

In studying income inequality, it is very common to look at sample means for deciles or quintiles of the sample, and to assume that the sample means are good estimators of the true means. In this ...
andrewH's user avatar
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31 votes
7 answers
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What are good data visualization techniques to compare distributions?

I am writing my PhD thesis and I've realized that I rely excessively in box plots in order to compare distributions. Which other alternatives do you like for achieving this task? I'd also like to ask ...
7 votes
1 answer
4k views

Effective way to visualize net growth/profit/income?

A non-profit has donors with monthly commitments, which you can think of as subscriptions. What is the best way to show for each month new acquisitions, cancels, and net growth? The relationship is <...
Andrew's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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Standardized mean decomposition (Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition)

How does standardized mean decomposition differ from the simpler dummy variable regression? How does the average in mean outcomes or interpretation of results attributable to a particular treatment or ...
Victor's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
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Is it possible to make quantitative comparisons using income inequality metrics?

I've calculated income inequality metrics (Gini/Hoover/Theil coefficients) for several populations. I know I can make claims like "this population has a higher Gini coefficient, so its distribution in ...
Jordan's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Disagregating overall growth into contributing factors

I have a dataset with library document holdings per publicationyear, which I can query for the frequency of terms, subjects, etc. That allows me to construct times-series of the "popularity" of ...
mhermans's user avatar
  • 168
7 votes
2 answers
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Measuring homogeneity across different spatial aggregations of data

I'm working with dataset of individual households that I aggregate into 'areas' using several different spatial configurations, from smaller to bigger. These areas are then characterized by four ...
radek's user avatar
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3 votes
4 answers
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Ranking distributional data by similarity

The question in short: What methods can be used to quantify distributional relationships between data when the distribution is unknown? Now the longer story: I have a list of distributions and would ...
Ampleforth's user avatar