A school administrator surveyed high school sophomores about their expectations for college attendance. One question asked was: "What do you think the chances are that you will graduate from college?" Their responses are shown below in the two-way table by gender.

The percentage of males in the distribution is 46% and it represents the marginal distribution of males in the population.

To obtain the percentage of males out of the total respondent ; we use the relation ;

Number of males / total number of respondents

Number of males = (31 + 34 + 64 + 109 + 75) = 313

Number of females = (22 + 70 + 70 + 112 + 98) = 372

Total number of respondents = (number of males + number of females) = (313 + 372) = 685

Percentage of males = (313 / 685) × 100% = 45.69% = 46%

This percentage represents the marginal distribution of males as it is the percentage of just one of the random variables.

If the percentage represents more than one such that one variable depends on the other, then it would have represented a conditional distribution.