Relative Frequency

Relative frequency refers to the percentage or proportion of times that a given value occurs within a set of numbers, such as in the data recorded for a variable in a survey data set. In the following example of a distribution of 10 values—1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8—while the absolute frequency of the value, 8, is 3, the relative frequency is 30% as the value, 8, makes up 3 of the 10 values. In this example, if the source of the data has a wider range of possible scores than the observed values (such as a 0-10 survey scale), then it is permissible to report that some of possible values (e.g. 0, 4, 6, 9, and 10) were not observed ...