ABSTRACT

This paper starts with a brief introduction to the exploratory data analysis methods. Then it examines the provincial unemployment rates of Turkey for 2008-2013 period by using these methods on official TURKSTAT data. A short explanation of a few very simple methods, such as coded-table, stem-and-leaf, five-pointsummary and box-plot, is given and they are implemented on the data. It was found that in general the provincial unemployment rates have increased in 2009 and decreased later on until 2013. But in 2012 and 2013 a contrary movement has been developed for some provinces. They are mostly Southeast Anatolia provinces and their unemployment rates strikingly high for the last two years of the study period. This finding is exactly what was expected from an exploratory data analysis: to get a few clues about some phenomenon which should be investigated further by making use of inferential statistical methods. It is leaved to the readers or other investigators to think and bring out the reasons that caused this unusual and unexpected increase of unemployment rates for those provinces named in the study