Data Types: NOIR

Qualitative Quantitative
(categorical) (numerical)

Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio

(not ordered) (ordered) (differences) (fractions)

Nominal = “Names” Ordinal = has order, Interval – has order, Ratio – has order,
but differences differences between differences between
E.g. Gender, Color between levels is values is consistent, values is consistent,
unknown but 0 does not and 0 means “none”
mean “none”
E.g. Satisfaction E.g. Height of
score, level of pain E.g. Temperature in people in the room
°F

© 2018 Data Literacy. All rights reserved. 7

 Why does data type matter?

Quantitative Categorical variables Quantitative

variables make axes make “buckets” or variables make…
headers
sequential
6 and
5 diverging
4
color palettes with
3
varying saturation
2

0 Categorical variables
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
make colors with
One Two Three Four different hues

© 2018 Data Literacy. All rights reserved. 8

Missoula, MT – 30°F on January 10th Missoula, MT – 15°F on January 16th

Is the temperature “half” of

what it was last Friday?
Learning About Reshaping Data with Emojis

Pivoted Format “Stacked” or “Record” Format

Animals Sports Fruit Starts with A Animals

Starts with A 🐜 🎯 🍎 Starts with A Sports
Starts with A Fruit
Starts with B 🐻 🏀 🍌 Starts with B Animals
Starts with C 😺 🏏 🍒 Starts with B Sports
Starts with B Fruit
Starts with C Animals
Starts with C Sports
Starts with C Fruit

© 2018 Data Literacy. All rights reserved. 11

The “Average” NFL Player…

Height Age …is about 25 years old,

just over 6'2" in height,
weighs a little more than
244lbs and makes slightly
Weight Salary
less than $1.5M in salary
per year. Can you tell
which distribution goes
with which trait?
61,316 tows
What are the most common Makes that got towed?
“Ford”
“FORD”
“FORF”
“Forrrd”
“Peterbilt”
“Peterbelt”
“Peterbutt”
“Pete”
“Mitsubishi”

“Mitsubishit”
“Burnt Car”
Who needs spell check, anyway?
What was the effect of cleaning the Make column?
What was the effect of the grouping?
In 1642, Abel Tasman was the
first European to discover New
Zealand. He mistakenly though
the two islands were connected,
and named the area between the
Zeehaen’s Bight, after his ship

In 1769, over a century later,

James Cook was the first
European to completely
circumnavigate the pair of islands
that make up the native home of
the Māori people. He correctly
noticed that there was a passage
through, and the two land masses
weren’t connected. The area
between them is now knows as
Cook’s Strait
Ethics and Data Science
by DJ Patil, Hilary Mason, Mike Loukides

The 5 C’s:
• Consent
• Clarity
• Consistence and Trust
• Control and Transparency
• Consequences

Princeton Case Studies:

Automated healthcare app, Dynamic sound identification,
Optimizing schools, Law Enforcement ChatBots, Hiring by
machine, Public sector data analytics

https://aiethics.princeton.edu/case-studies/