Types of Data in Statistics
In statistics, there are two main types of data: categorical data and numerical data. Depending on which type an attribute or a variable in your dataset belongs to, its data processing, modeling, analysis, and visualization techniques might differ. In this section, we will explain the details of these two main data types and discuss relevant points for each of them, which are summarized in the following table:
For the rest of this section, we will go into more detail about each of the preceding comparisons, starting with categorical data in the next subsection.
Categorical Data
When an attribute or a variable is categorical, the possible values it can take belong to a predetermined and fixed set of values. For example, in a weather-related dataset, you might have an attribute to describe the overall weather for each day, in which case that attribute might be among a list of discrete values such...