4 TYPES

OF DATA
1 2

S M L

3 AN OVERVIEW
4
What?
Data is everywhere! This is even more true for those in Data
Science & Analytics - it is the lifeblood of all things we do!

There are several different types of data - and knowing the

difference is important to ensure we can process it in the right
way, and get the results we need!

At a high level, we can break data down into two main types;
Numeric & Categorical (also sometimes called Quantitative &
Qualitative)

Numeric Categorical

The simplest possible way to differentiate these two categories is

that numeric data can be expressed as a number, while
categorical data cannot.

These two categories of data can be broken down further - and

this will all start to make more sense - let's take a look!
Continuous data...
Numeric Categorical

Continuous Discrete Nominal Ordinal

Continuous data is numeric, but exists in fractional form - in

that it represents information that can be divided to a more
granular level.

For example, the NBA Player LeBron

James is listed as being 2.06m tall....

...but if we had a high-tech distance

measuring device, we might find that he is
actually 2.064759m tall.

Continuous data has an infinite number of

possible values within.

Other examples could be the speed of a

truck, the time taken to run a race, or the
size of a room.
Discrete data...
Numeric Categorical

Continuous Discrete Nominal Ordinal

Like continuous data, discrete data is also numeric, but exists in

whole form - in that it represents information that is countable
and cannot be divided into smaller forms.

For example, the football player Cristiano

Ronaldo has scored 38 goals this season...

...unlike LeBron James' height, this value

can't be broken down further - there are no
half or quarter goals.

Other examples could be the number of

students in a school, the number of
entrants in a competition, or the number of
days in a year...
Nominal data...
Numeric Categorical

Continuous Discrete Nominal Ordinal

Nominal data is a type of categorical data - unique in the fact

that the data-points do not have an order. Nominal comes
from the Latin "nomen" which simply means "name"

For example, the social media brands to the

right; Instagram, TikTok, Twitter &
Facebook...

On their own, they are just a list of names,

labels or categories - without any one of
them being greater or smaller, or better or
worse than the others.

Other examples could be; people's first

names, countries, or colours
Ordinal data...
Numeric Categorical

Continuous Discrete Nominal Ordinal

Like nominal data, ordinal data is a type of categorical data. The

difference is that ordinal data does contain an underlaying
order or ranking

For example, t-shirt sizes where a Medium S

is bigger than a Small, a Large is bigger than
a Medium (and much bigger than a Small)

Even if these ordinal values take on numeric

form (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd) we avoid applying M
arithmetic to them because they generally
only show the sequence, not the scale.

Other examples could be; Good, Average,

Bad values for customer satisfaction, or
letter grades for an exam result of A, B, C L
etc...
Why does this matter?
While these data types might seem obvious to some, they
are important and underpin a lot of other concepts in
Statistics & in Data Science!

Knowing the difference is important to ensure we can

process it in the right way, and get the results we need!

We may need to know which type of Hypothesis Test to

apply to measure a change or difference, and knowing the
type of data we're dealing with is crucial.

We may need to clean or pre-process our data for

Machine Learning - and knowing the different data types
will determine how we do this in an appropriate manner.

There are many other areas where these simple concepts

help us work efficiently & effectively so it's always good to
keep them in mind!

Happy Learning!
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