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In mathematics and statistics, a quantitative variable may be continuous or discrete if it is typically obtained by measuring or counting, respectively. [1] If it can take on two particular real values such that it can also take on all real values between them (including values that are arbitrarily or infinitesimally close together), the variable is continuous in that interval. [2]
A discrete probability distribution is applicable to the scenarios where the set of possible outcomes is discrete (e.g. a coin toss, a roll of a die) and the probabilities are encoded by a discrete list of the probabilities of the outcomes; in this case the discrete probability distribution is known as probability mass function.
Benford's law, which describes the frequency of the first digit of many naturally occurring data. The ideal and robust soliton distributions. Zipf's law or the Zipf distribution. A discrete power-law distribution, the most famous example of which is the description of the frequency of words in the English language.
Furthermore, it covers distributions that are neither discrete nor continuous nor mixtures of the two. An example of such distributions could be a mix of discrete and continuous distributions—for example, a random variable that is 0 with probability 1/2, and takes a random value from a normal distribution with probability 1/2.
A mixed random variable is a random variable whose cumulative distribution function is neither discrete nor everywhere-continuous. [10] It can be realized as a mixture of a discrete random variable and a continuous random variable; in which case the CDF will be the weighted average of the CDFs of the component variables. [10]
In general, distributions can be described as a discrete distribution (with a probability mass function), an absolutely continuous distribution (with a probability density), a singular distribution (with neither), or can be decomposed into a mixture of these. [1]
The concept of data type is similar to the concept of level of measurement, but more specific. For example, count data requires a different distribution (e.g. a Poisson distribution or binomial distribution) than non-negative real-valued data require, but both fall under the same level of measurement (a ratio scale).
Unlike a continuous-time signal, a discrete-time signal is not a function of a continuous argument; however, it may have been obtained by sampling from a continuous-time signal. When a discrete-time signal is obtained by sampling a sequence at uniformly spaced times, it has an associated sampling rate.