Marginal counts
Although our main interest is usually on the relationship between two categorical variables, it can also be of interest to examine the overall distribution of each variable separately. These are called the marginal distributions of the two variables and are determined by the row and column totals of the contingency table.
Variable X | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Variable Y | X1 | X2 | X3 | X4 | Total | |
Y1 | 002 | 003 | 057 | 06 | 68 | |
Y2 | 052 | 170 | 163 | 17 | 402 | |
Y3 | 156 | 125 | 061 | 06 | 348 | |
Y4 | 220 | 083 | 039 | 04 | 346 | |
Total | 430 | 381 | 320 | 33 |
The row and column totals correspond to the heights of the stacks in stacked bar charts. For example, the above row totals are the heights of the stacks in the following diagram.
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