2 Producing useful tables

In much of your statistical work, you will begin with data set, often presented in the form of a table, and use the information in the table to produce diagrams and/or summary statistics that help in the interpretation of the data set. However, in practice, much interpretation of data sets can be done directly from an appropriate table of data, or by re-presenting the data in a rather different tabular form. Dealing with data in tables is the subject of this section and the next. By the time you have finished you should be able to produce tables which make certain aspects of the data in question more obvious.