Observed counts: what it means and how to read it
In the report: Observed counts — The crosstab of the counts the test uses — the same table as STATS_CROSSTABS.
In plain words
A teacher asked 50 students which club they joined and wanted to see what the test was really fed with. She looked at Observed counts. It is the table of real counts: 12 girls and 10 boys joined chess, 13 girls and 15 boys joined art. Now she can see every number the test starts from, and nothing is hidden inside a single result. She sets it next to the expected counts, and the test looks at how far apart the two tables are.
Example
The cell with Observed counts is selected in each report; point at a label to see its note.
- — the sample data (50 rows) the examples use
- —
=STATS_CHI2(Data!A1:T51, "gender", "group")
Where you see it
STATS_CHI2— Pearson chi-square test for association between two categorical columns.
Related values
- Expected counts — The counts expected if the two variables were unrelated: row total × column total / N, for the non-empty categories. The test compares them with the observed counts.
- Percentage — The share of the rows in the range, empty answers included; rows with "." (not applicable) are left out.
- Valid percentage — The share among the valid answers: missing and not applicable are left out, and _other too when the labels are closed.
- Not applicable — Cells with "." — the question did not apply to the respondent; they are kept apart from missing answers.
- Adjusted residuals — With details = TRUE: the adjusted standardized residual of each cell (SPSS "Adjusted Residual"): how far the count is from the one expected if the two columns were independent, in standard errors. Empty when there is one row or one column.
Get it in your sheet
One formula in a cell gives the whole report, Observed counts included. ALS Stats is a free add-on for Google Sheets™.
Install ALS Stats from Google Workspace Marketplace (opens in a new tab)