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A variable used to associate each data point in a set of observations, or in a particular instance, to a certain qualitative category is a categorical variable. Categorical variables have two types of scales, ordinal and nominal. [1] The first type of categorical scale is dependent on natural ordering, levels that are defined by a sense of quality.
In statistics, a categorical variable (also called qualitative variable) is a variable that can take on one of a limited, and usually fixed, number of possible values, assigning each individual or other unit of observation to a particular group or nominal category on the basis of some qualitative property. [1]
The data type is a fundamental concept in statistics and controls what sorts of probability distributions can logically be used to describe the variable, the permissible operations on the variable, the type of regression analysis used to predict the variable, etc. The concept of data type is similar to the concept of level of measurement, but ...
The data that all share a qualitative property form a nominal category. A variable which codes for the presence or absence of such a property is called a binary categorical variable , or equivalently a dummy variable .
Level of measurement or scale of measure is a classification that describes the nature of information within the values assigned to variables. [1] Psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens developed the best-known classification with four levels, or scales, of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
Scaling of data: One of the properties of the tests is the scale of the data, which can be interval-based, ordinal or nominal. [3] Nominal scale is also known as categorical. [6] Interval scale is also known as numerical. [6] When categorical data has only two possibilities, it is called binary or dichotomous. [1]
Categorical univariate data consists of non-numerical observations that may be placed in categories. It includes labels or names used to identify an attribute of each element. Categorical univariate data usually use either nominal or ordinal scale of measurement. [3]
Because variables conforming only to nominal or ordinal measurements cannot be reasonably measured numerically, sometimes they are grouped together as categorical variables, whereas ratio and interval measurements are grouped together as quantitative variables, which can be either discrete or continuous, due to their numerical nature.