Data analysis focuses on using various statistical methods to process and analyze data. Simply browsing data does not yield many valuable insights. For beginners, using functions such as mean, maximum, variance, etc. can help us obtain some preliminary conclusions, which is quite practical for simple data analysis.

When using IBM SPSS Statistics for simple data analysis, we can directly use its categorical summary function to obtain statistical values such as mean, maximum, variance, etc., without manually calculating functions.

1、 Open data file

Firstly, open a set of data containing quantitative variables. As shown in Figure 1, the current dataset contains two quantitative variables: unit price and number of clicked pages.

Figure 1: Open Data File

To confirm whether the variable is a quantitative variable, we can open the variable view and check the type of the variable. Why do we need to check? This is because some quantitative variables have variable types set to "string", and SPSS cannot calculate string data.

Figure 2: Variable Attributes

2、 Use the classification summary function

After checking the type of the variable, you can open the summary function in the data menu and open the data classification summary panel.

Figure 3: Classification Summary

Next, we need to take the crucial step of selecting variables. The meanings of the variables are as follows:

1. The boundary variable, which serves as the classification basis, will have its variable value used as the summary classification

2. Summary variables, newly created summary variables, can be added by adding different functions

Figure 4: Selecting Variables

For example, as shown in Figure 5, if we want to use "gender" as the classification basis and understand the summary of the average order value and number of page clicks for different gender groups, we need to add "gender" as the "boundary variable" and add "average order value" and "number of page clicks" as the summary variables.

After adding the summary variables, the system will default to adding an average unit price. If you need to change the function type, you can use the function button below it to set the function type.

As shown in Figure 6, three types of functions can be selected: summary statistics, specific values, and case numbers, and the display mode of function values can be set, such as percentage, score, and count.

Figure 6: Adding a Function

Since the system defaults to adding in English, we can use the "Name and Label" button on the summary variable to change the selected function name.

Figure 7: Rename and Label Functions

Multiple functions can be added to a summary variable, and each time a function is added, a variable needs to be added. As shown in Figure 8, we mainly used three functions: mean, maximum, and standard deviation to quickly understand the average unit price, maximum unit price, and dispersion degree (standard deviation) of the unit price distribution of the group.

Figure 8: Selection of variables and functions completed

Next, in the save options, SPSS provides three ways to add to the active dataset, create a new dataset, and export a new data file. Let's first take a look at the export format of 'add to existing dataset'.

Figure 9: Adding summary variables to the activity dataset

As shown in Figure 10, it can be seen that the function appears as a new summary variable, but in reality, it is calculated based on gender filtering. This data format is not intuitive enough, and it is recommended to use the method of creating a new dataset.

Figure 10: Summary Results

As shown in Figure 11, after selecting to create a new dataset and assigning it a name.

Figure 11: Summarized to a new dataset

The system will export function values in the new dataset. As shown in Figure 12, compared to adding to the active dataset, the function values of the new dataset will be more intuitive.

Figure 12: Summary Results

The above is a demonstration of the method of classifying and summarizing data in SPSS simple data analysis. Although the classification summary results are some basic function values, they can help users quickly obtain an overview of the current data and are quite practical functions. Interested students can click on SPSS to download and fill in relevant information to apply for a trial download.