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 Figure 2. Distribution of all M&M's.

Notice that the distributions in Figures 1 and 2 are not identical. Figure 1 portrays the distribution in a sample of 55 M&M's. Figure 2 shows the proportions for all M&M's. Chance factors involving the machines used by the manufacturer introduce random variation into the different bags produced. Some bags will have a distribution of colors that is close to Figure 2; others will be further away.

Continuous Variables

The variable “color of M&M” used in this example is a discrete variable, and its distribution is also called discrete. Let us now extend the concept of a distribution to continuous variables.

The data shown in Table 2 are the times it took one of us (DL) to move the cursor over a small target in a series of 20 trials. The times are sorted from shortest to longest. The variable “time to respond” is a continuous variable. With time measured accurately (to many decimal places), no two response times would be expected to be the same. Measuring time in milliseconds (thousandths of a second) is often precise enough to approximate a continuous variable in psychology. As you can see in Table 2, measuring DL's responses this way produced times no two of which were the same. As a result, a frequency distribution would be uninformative: it would consist of the 20 times in the experiment, each with a frequency of 1. 42