TYPES OF DATA
Whether you are a businessman, marketer, data scientist, or
another professional who works with some kinds of data, you
should be familiar with the key list of data types.
Why?
Because the various data classifications allow you to correctly
use measurements and thus to correctly make decisions.
• Quantitative data:
• Quantitative data seems to be the easiest to explain. It
answers key questions such as “how many, “how much” and
“how often”.
• Quantitative data can be expressed as a number or can be
quantified. Simply put, it can be measured by numerical
variables.
• Examples of quantitative data:
• Scores on tests and exams e.g. 85, 67, 90 and etc.
• The weight of a person or a subject.
• Your shoe size.
• The temperature in a room.
• Qualitative data
• Qualitative data can’t be expressed as a number and can’t be
measured. Qualitative data consist of words, pictures, and
symbols, not numbers.
• Qualitative data is also called categorical data because the
information can be sorted by category, not by number.
• Qualitative data can answer questions such as “how this has
happened” or and “why this has happened”.
• Examples of qualitative data:
• Colors e.g. the color of the sea
• Your favorite holiday destination such as Hawaii, New Zealand
and etc.
• Names as John, Patricia,…..
• Ethnicity such as American Indian, Asian, etc.
• Nominal data
• Nominal data is used just for labeling variables, without any
type of quantitative value. The name ‘nominal’ comes from
the Latin word “nomen” which means ‘name’.
• The nominal data just name a thing without applying it to
order. Actually, the nominal data could just be called “labels.”
• Examples of Nominal Data:
• Gender (Women, Men)
• Hair color (Blonde, Brown, Brunette, Red, etc.)
• Marital status (Married, Single, Widowed)
• Ethnicity (Hispanic, Asian)
• Ordinal data
• Ordinal data shows where a number is in order. This is the
crucial difference from nominal types of data.
• Ordinal data is data which is placed into some kind of order
by their position on a scale. Ordinal data may indicate
superiority.
• Examples of Ordinal Data:
• The first, second and third person in a competition.
• Letter grades: A, B, C, and etc.
• When a company asks a customer to rate the sales experience
on a scale of 1-10.
• Economic status: low, medium and high.
• Discrete data
• Discrete data is a count that involves only integers. The
discrete values cannot be subdivided into parts.
• For example, the number of children in a class is discrete
data. You can count whole individuals. You can’t count 1.5
kids.
• Examples of discrete data:
• The number of students in a class.
• The number of workers in a company.
• The number of home runs in a baseball game.
• The number of test questions you answered correctly
• 6. Continuous data
• Continuous data is information that could be meaningfully
divided into finer levels. It can be measured on a scale or
continuum and can have almost any numeric value.
• For example, you can measure your height at very precise
scales — meters, centimeters, millimeters and etc.
• Examples of continuous data:
• The amount of time required to complete a project.
• The height of children.
• The square footage of a two-bedroom house.
• The speed of cars.
