APA Dictionary of Psychology

a tabular representation of the number of times a specific value or datum point occurs. The left column lists the different categories of a categorical variable or scores of a continuous variable, and the right column lists the number of occurrences of each. When a frequency distribution is plotted on a graph, it is often called a frequency curve, frequency diagram, or frequency polygon. When represented mathematically via an equation, it is called a frequency function. Also called frequency table. See also cumulative frequency distribution; relative frequency distribution.