Classification of Variables and Types of Scales

Variables

- Categorical and Numerical

Categorical (qualitative)

- Variables take categories as their values such as “yes”, “no” or “blue”. “brown”, “green”
o Nominal – defined categories
 Examples: Marital Status, Political Party, or Eye Color
o Ordinal – ordered categories
 Examples: Ratings such as Good, Better, Best or Low, Med, High

Numerical (quantitative)

- Variables have values that represent a counted or measured quantity.

o Discrete variables – arise from a counting process; whole number
 Examples: Number of children, Defects per hour
o Continuous variables – arise from a measuring process.
 Uses measuring tools
 Examples: Weight, Voltage

Measurement Scales

A nominal scale classifies data into distinct categories in which no ranking is implied.

*To summarize nominal data, frequency or percentage is used.*

An ordinal scale classifies data into distinct categories in which ranking is implied.

*Ordinal data can be given as frequencies.*

An interval scale is an ordered scale in which the difference between measurements is a meaningful
quantity but the measurements do not have a true zero point

- No ‘absolute’ zero – point is not true

- There are always equal degrees between categories.
- Can be below zero

For example: Temperature – 0°, 25°C, 50°C, 75°C, 100°C

A ratio scale is an ordered scale in which the difference between the measurements have a true zero
point.

- “0” indicates absence of something

- Has meaning to arithmetic
- Example: Weight – 0 kg, 20 kg, 40 kg, 60 kg
Student’ marks – 0, 10, 20, 30, 70

Interval/Ratio

- Also known as scale, quantitative, or parametric

- Meaning has difference
- Can be discrete, with whole numbers
- Can be continuous, with fractional numbers
Types of Data: Nominal, Ordinal, and Interval/Ratio

Data

- Central to statistical analysis

- Collecting data to find out more about a phenomenon or process
- Each thing we collect data about is called an observation

Variables

- Record the measurements we are interested in.

- Example: age, sex, and chocolate preference can all be stored as variables
Level of Measurement determines the summary statistics, graphs, and analysis