Statistics add-in software for statistical analysis in Excel
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  • Association in 2-way contingency tables tutorial

Displaying patterns of association

A p-value offers little insight into the data. It may indicate that there is an association, but does not identify the nature of the relationship. A mosaic plot expresses the deviations from independence.

  1. On the Analyse-it ribbon tab, in the Compare Groups group, click Mosaic.

    A mosaic plot is added to the analysis task pane.

  2. In the Split drop-down list, select Y.
  3. In the Color by drop-down list, select Residual.
  4. Click Recalculate.
    The results are calculated and the analysis report opens.

The mosaic plot represents the counts in a contingency table by tiles whose area is proportional to the cell count. Column widths show the marginal proportions of hair colors. The heights of the tiles show the conditional frequency of eye color given hair color. Under the null hypothesis of independence, the heights of the tiles in each row should be the same.

mosaic plot

It is easier to see the deviation from independence by coloring and shading the tiles by the residuals from the Pearson test. Positive deviations are blue, negative red. The absolute value of the residual is shown by the shading; cells with residuals less than 2 are unfilled; cells >= 2 are filled; those >= 4 are filled with a darker pattern. Under the assumption of independence, these values roughly correspond to two-tailed probabilities p < .05 and p < .0001 that a given value of exceeds 2 or 4.

You can see from the mosaic plot that Black/Brown and Blond/Blue are over-represented, while Blond/Brown is under-represented.

Next topic: Reordering data

  •  Tutorials
  •  Distribution tutorial
  •  Correlation / PCA tutorial
  •  Compare groups means tutorial
  •  Association in 2-way contingency tables tutorial
  •  Cross tabulation of the data
  •  Displaying patterns of association
  •  Reordering data
  •  Simple linear regression tutorial
  •  Bland-Altman method comparison tutorial
  •  Estimating the precision of a measurement procedure (CLSI EP05-A3)
  •  Evaluating the linearity of a measurement procedure (CLSI EP06-A)
  •  Verifying the precision of a measurement procedure against a performance claim and estimating the bias (CLSI EP15-A3)
  •  Pareto charts tutorial
  •  Process control charts tutorial
  •  Process capability tutorial



Version 6.15
Published 18-Apr-2023
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