statistics and data analysis

Question 1

what is a nominal variable

Answer 1

data in the form of labels or names
but without a natural order or ranking
e.g. eye colour
it is a type of categorical variable

Question 2

what is an ordinal variable
give an example

Answer 2

a named variable
which has a natural order e.g. ‘level of satisfaction’ or ‘degree of pain’ or ‘socioeconomic status’ or ‘workplace status’

Question 3

what is an interval variable
give an example

Answer 3

named variable
with a natural order
AND equal intervals between variables
e.g. temperature, credit scores, SAT scores

but NOT a ‘true zero’ value (that’s a ‘ratio’ variable)
for temperature, you can have negative degrees celcius, so there’s no zero that the value cannot go beneath
you cannot have a credit score of negative, or of zero

Question 4

what is an ratio variable
give an example

Answer 4

named variable
with a natural order
AND equal intervals between variables
AND a ‘true zero’ value
e.g. height, weight, length

e.g. your height could technically be zero but NOT negative
equally with weight