After z-score transform, shape of distribution changes?

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cperdue
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Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2019 5:41 pm

After z-score transform, shape of distribution changes?

Post by cperdue »

I was doing a tutorial on jamovi in my undergrad statistics class, and was showing my students how to use the Compute option to create a new variable. I used the Z function to turn an existing variable into a new column of z-scores.

I ran Descriptives on the new z-scores to remind the students that they now had a mean of zero and an SD of one, and as a further demo I requested a histogram to illustrate that the shape of the distribution was unchanged from the original data.

Except... the new histogram HAD changed from the original shape. The original was a normal distribution, but the new histogram of z-scores appeared to be positively skewed. I tried this with other data sets, and got the same result: the histogram of z-scores appeared to be a different shape than for the original data.

i'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious here... Any ideas?
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jonathon
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Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: After z-score transform, shape of distribution changes?

Post by jonathon »

hi,

i just took a look at this and went "Wowsers, what have we done wrong here?!" ... but its all correct, and what looks to be a change in distribution, is just an artifact of histogram binning. if you turn on the density plot, you'll see that it's unchanged.

cheers

jonathon
cperdue
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Oct 16, 2019 5:41 pm

Re: After z-score transform, shape of distribution changes?

Post by cperdue »

Still, it's disconcerting to see a variable known to be perfectly normally distributed (skewness = zero) graphically displayed as if it were skewed.... I'm always uncomfortable in situations where I have to tell my students to "ignore that part of the output" or not to request it at all.

Otherwise, my first semester of using jamovi with my stats class has been very successful.
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jonathon
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Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: After z-score transform, shape of distribution changes?

Post by jonathon »

Still, it's disconcerting to see a variable known to be perfectly normally distributed (skewness = zero) graphically displayed as if it were skewed....
yup, that's just how histograms behave unfortunately.

if you change their range of values, the start and end points will change too, which in turn changes their shape.

the density curve is a more honest indicator of a distribution than a histogram imho (perfect illustration here).

cheers

jonathon
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