There are three distinct types of features: quantitative, ordinal, and categorical. We can also consider a fourth type of feature—the Boolean—as this type does have a few distinct qualities, although it is actually a type of categorical feature. These feature types can be ordered in terms of how much information they convey. Quantitative features have the highest information capacity followed by ordinal, categorical, and Boolean.
Let's take a look at the tabular analysis:
|
Feature type |
Order |
Scale |
Tendency |
Dispersion |
Shape |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Quantitative |
Yes |
Yes |
Mean |
Range, variance, and standard deviation |
Skewness, kurtosis |
|
Ordinal |
Yes |
No |
Median |
Quantiles |
NA |
|
Categorical |
No |
No |
Mode |
NA |
NA |
The preceding table shows the three types of features, their statistics, and properties. Each feature inherits the statistics from the features from the next row it in the table. For example, the measurement of central tendency for quantitative features includes the median and mode...
