Determine whether each variable is qualitative, continuous or discrete Size is a

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Last but not least, in datasets it is very often the case that numbers are used for qualitative variables. For instance, a researcher may assign the number “1” to women and the number “2” to men (or “0” to the answer “No” and “1” to the answer “Yes”). Despite the numerical classification, the variable gender is still a qualitative variable and not a discrete variable as it may look. The numerical classification is only used to facilitate data collection and data management. It is indeed easier to write the number “1” or “2” instead of “women” or “men”, and thus less prone to encoding errors.

The same goes for the identification of each observation. Suppose you collected information on 100 students. You may use their student’s ID to identify them in the dataset (so that you can trace them back). Most of the time, students’ ID (or ID in general) are encoded as numeric values. At first sight, it may thus look like a quantitative variable. However, ID is clearly not a quantitative variable because it actually corresponds to an anonymized version of the student’s first and last name. If you think about it, it would make no sense to compute the mean or median on the IDs, as it does represent a measurement (but rather just an easy way to identify students).

If you face this kind of setup, do not forget to transform your variable into the right type before performing any statistical analyses. Usually, a basic descriptive analysis (and knowledge about the variables which have been measured) prior to the main statistical analyses is enough to check that all variable types are correct.

Thanks for reading. I hope this article helped you to understand the different types of variable. If you would like to learn more about the different data types in R, read the article “Data types in R”.

As always, if you have a question or a suggestion related to the topic covered in this article, please add it as a comment so other readers can benefit from the discussion.

Jesus H.

Intro Stats / AP Statistics 11 months, 2 weeks ago

Determine whether each variable is qualitative, continuous or discrete Size is a variable Screen type is variable. Number of channels available is & variable

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Identify the individuals, variables, and data corresponding to the variables. Determine whether each variable is qualitative, continuous, or discrete. (FIGURE CAN'T COPY) Widescreen TVs The following data relate to widescreen high-definition televisions.

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Video Transcript

Alrighty guys, Here we go. I did make a little bit of a spreadsheet for you to kind of help you process the answers here. So it looks like in the question they want us to identify the individuals the variables and the data correspondent variables. So we'll start there or individuals. Our right here you'll find them in all those individuals you're just going to find inside the graph that they provide are variables are all these guys. So the everything here, those are variables are size, screen type and prices are variables and then the data correspondent, the variables are all right here. So our variables are size, screen type and price and our data correspondent variables are right there listed. Alright. It also wants us to it also asked us about what type of variable it is. So our size and inches um I have that list is continuous and here's why um for measurements um I always trying to imagine myself with a really, really, really good measuring device and if I have a perfect measuring device, is it possible to get a ton of decimals and size? And the answer is yes. Well obviously maybe this sanyo tv might be just about 42 inches. I bet they're pretty darn close to it. It might not be perfectly 42" inside. So I'm going to call that continuous because that might be 41.99999 or 42.000 for something like that. So I'm gonna call that continuous. Our screen type is qualitative because it's just a type, there's no numbers involved. Screen type either have plasma or projection and that's pretty much it as far as this one goes, so that's gonna be qualitative, there's no numbers involved. I have the price is discreet and here's why um even if I had a perfect measuring device like I did for the size and inches, they're not going to charge me fractions of pennies, okay, I'm not going to charge me fractions of pennies. That's not what they do at stores. So my price I could I possibly obviously I wouldn't want to do this, but um could I possibly count the number of pennies? It would take me to buy these TVs and the answer would definitely be yes. So since I could count it, I would call that discreet.