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1.2 Types of Data

The video introduces three basic types of data in statistics: numerical data, nominal data, and ordinal data. Numerical data consists of real numbers allowing for arithmetic operations, while nominal data includes categories with no meaningful calculations beyond counting. Ordinal data, although categorical, has a ranking order but does not permit arithmetic calculations, allowing for comparative statements instead.

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6 views5 pages

1.2 Types of Data

The video introduces three basic types of data in statistics: numerical data, nominal data, and ordinal data. Numerical data consists of real numbers allowing for arithmetic operations, while nominal data includes categories with no meaningful calculations beyond counting. Ordinal data, although categorical, has a ranking order but does not permit arithmetic calculations, allowing for comparative statements instead.

Uploaded by

Martin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Video 1.

2
Slide 1:
Welcome everyone.

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Slide 2:
In the ‘Introduction to statistics’ video we mentioned that statistics is all about
extracting information from data. In this video we will talk about three basic
types of data.

From point of view of statistical analysis, there are three basic main types of data.
They are.
• Numerical Data, also known as quantitative or interval data.
• Nominal Data, also referred to as categorical data. and,
• Ordinal data, also known as ranked data.

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Slide 3:
Let us discuss these one by one, starting with numerical data.
The values of numerical data are real numbers. For example, if you survey
students and ask them as to what is their weekly income. The data that you
collect will be numerical data.
Similarly, heights, weights, prices, waiting time at a medical practice etc. are all
numerical variables.
All arithmetic calculations are permitted on numerical data. It is therefore
meaningful to talk about the weekly income of one student being 2 times that of
another, or 10 dollars more than the other, and so on.

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Slide 4:
The values of nominal data on the other hand are categories.
• For example: Responses to questions about marital status with Single,
Married, Divorced, and Widowed as the available choices. These
choices are coded as 1, 2 , 3 and 4 respectively.
Arithmetic operations on Nominal data do not make any sense.
• For Example: does Married ÷ 2 = Divorced?!. Therefore no calculations are
allowed on nominal data except counting the number of observations in each
category and calculating their proportions.
• To clarify this, suppose you surveyed 100 individuals, asking them
about their marital status, and 40 individuals said that they are single.
The ratio of 40 to 100 is 0.4. This means that 40% of those who
responded to the survey are single. This is the only calculation that is
allowed on nominal data.

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Slide 5:
Ordinal data appear to be categorical in nature, but their values have an order; i.e.
the values have a ranking to them.
For Example: University course evaluation surveys, where students are asked to
assign a score to the quality of the course at the end of the semester. The rating
could be either poor, fair, good, very good, or excellent with numerical codes.

While it is still NOT meaningful to do arithmetic calculations on this data, we


can say things like. excellent is better than poor, or fair is worse than very good.

This concludes our introduction to types of data. You may now pro-cede to the
next video.

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