Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio & Cardinal: Examples

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Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio & Cardinal:

Examples
Contents:

1. Nominal
2. Ordinal
3. Interval
4. Ratio
5. Cardinal
Watch the video for an introduction toNominal Ordinal Interval Ratio:

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1. Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio

A pie chart displays groups of nominal variables (i.e. categories).

Nominal: nominal is from the Latin nomalis, which means “pertaining to names”. It’s another name for a category.
Examples:
 Gender: Male, Female, Other.
 Hair Color: Brown, Black, Blonde, Red, Other.
  Type of living accommodation: House, Apartment, Trailer, Other.
 Genotype: Bb, bb, BB, bB.
 Religious preference: Buddhist, Mormon, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Other.

A nominal variable is another name for a categorical variable. Nominal variables have two or more categories
without having any kind of natural order. they are variables with no numeric value, such as occupation or political
party affiliation. Another way of thinking about nominal variables is that they are named (nominal is from
Latin nominalis, meaning pertaining to names).
Nominal variables:
1. Cannot be quantified. In other words, you can’t perform arithmetic operations on them, like addition
or subtraction, or logical operations like “equal to” or “greater than” on them.
2. Cannot be assigned any order.

A pie chart displays data in categories with nominal variables.

Examples of Nominal Variables

 Gender (Male, Female, Transgender).
 Eye color (Blue, Green, Brown, Hazel).
 Type of house (Bungalow, Duplex, Ranch).
 Type of pet (Dog, Cat, Rodent, Fish, Bird).
 Genotype ( AA, Aa, or aa).
Nominal variables are related to the nominal scale, where data is categorized without any order.

The Nominal Scale

The nominal scale, sometimes called the qualitative type, places non-numerical data into categories or
classifications. For example:
 Placing cats into breed type. Example: a Persian is a breed of cat.
 Putting cities into states. Example: Jacksonville is a city in Florida.
 Surveying people to find out if men or women have higher self-esteem.
 Finding out if introverts or extroverts are more likely to be philanthropic.
These pieces of information aren’t numerical. They are assigned a category (breeds of cat, cities in Florida, men and
women, introvert and extrovert). Qualitative variables are measured on the nominal scale.

Mean Mode and Median for the Nominal Scale

The nominal scale uses categories, so finding the median makes no sense. You could put the items in alphabetical
order but even then, the middle item would have no meaning as a median. However, a mode (the most frequent item
in the set) is possible. For example, if you were to survey a group of random people and ask them what the most
romantic city in the World is, Venice or Paris might be the most common response (the mode).
The nominal scale is one of four scales of measurement. The other three are:
 The Ordinal Scale: Rank order (1st, 2nd 3rd), dichotomous data that has two choices like true/false
or guilty/innocent and non-dichotomous data with choices like “completely agree” “somewhat agree”
“neutral” and “disagree.”
 The Interval Scale, sometimes called Scaled Variable: data with degrees of difference like time B.C.
or Celsius. Interval scales have arbitrary zeros (for example, when B.C. began and ended has no real
mathematical basis).
 The Ratio Scale: encompasses most measurements in physics and engineering like mass and energy.
Ratio scales have meaningful zeros (zero energy means that energy does not exist).
The four scales were suggested by Stanley Smith Stevens in a 1946 Science article titled “On the Theory of Scales
of Measurement.”
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2. Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio

The ordinal scale classifies according to rank.

Ordinal: means in order. Includes “First,” “second” and “ninety ninth.”

Examples:
 High school class ranking: 1st, 9th, 87th…
 Socioeconomic status: poor, middle class, rich.
 The Likert Scale: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree.
 Level of Agreement: yes, maybe, no.
 Time of Day: dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night.
 Political Orientation: left, center, right.
The ordinal scale classifies according to rank.

Ordinal data is made up of ordinal variables. In other words, if you have a list that can be placed in “first,
second, third…” order, you have ordinal data. It sounds simple, but there are a couple of elements that can
be confusing:
1. You don’t have to have the exact words “first, second, third….” Instead, you can have different rating
scales, like “Hot, hotter, hottest” or “Agree, strongly agree, disagree.”
2. You don’t know if the intervals between the values are equal. We know that a list of cardinal numbers
like 1, 5, 10 have a set value between them (in this case, 5) but with ordinal data you just don’t know.
For example, in a marathon you might have first, second and third place. But if you don’t know the
exact finishing times, you don’t know what the interval between first and second, or second and third
is.

Ordinal Scales.
Ordinal scales are made up of ordinal data. Some examples of ordinal scales:

 High school class rankings: 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.

 Social economic class: working, middle, upper.
 The Likert Scale: agree, strongly agree, disagree etc.
The Likert Scale gives another example of how you can’t be sure about intervals with ordinal data. What is the
interval between “strongly agrees” and “agrees”? It’s practically impossible to put any kind of number to that
interval. Even if you could put a number to the interval, the gap between “strongly agree” and “agree” is likely to be
much smaller than the gap between “agree” and “no opinion.” Think of someone being asked to rate a question like
“Chocolate is irresistible.” Someone who likes chocolate a lot might have their pencil hover between answering
“strongly agree” or “agree”, but their pencil never hovers over “no opinion.”

Ordinal Scale Examples

The ordinal scale is a type of measurement scale that deals with ordered variables.
Let’s say you were asked to order five movies from your most favorite to your least favorite: Jaws, The Matrix, All
Good Things, Children of Men and The Sound of Music. Creating the order of preference results in the movies
being ordered on an ordinal scale:
1. The Matrix.
2. Jaws.
3. Children of Men.
4. The Sound of Music.
5. All Good Things.
A second example of the ordinal scale: you might conduct a survey and ask people to rate their level of satisfaction
with the choice of the following responses:
  Extremely satisfied.
 Satisfied.
 Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.
 Dissatisfied.
 Extremely dissatisfied.
The choices from “extremely satisfied” to “extremely dissatisfied” follow a natural order and are therefore ordinal
variables.

The ordinal scale is one of four measurement scalescommonly used. The other three are:
 The Nominal Scale: Data that can be put into categories.
 The Interval Scale: Data with degrees of difference like time B.C. or degrees Celsius.
 The Ratio Scale: Encompasses most measurements in physics and engineering like mass and energy.
Ratio scales have meaningful zeros (zero energy means that energy does not exist).
The ordinal scale and interval scales are very similar to each other and are often confused. If you assume that the
differences between the variables are equal, or if the distances are measured precisely (for example, using the
logarithmic scale) the scale is an interval scale.

Disadvantage of the Ordinal Scale

A major disadvantage with using the ordinal scale over other scales is that the distance between measurements is
not always equal. If you have a list of numbers like 1,2 and 3, you know that the distance between the numbers in
this case is exactly 1. But if you had “very satisfied”, “satisfied” and “neutral”, there’s nothing to say if the different
between the three ordinal variables is equal. In the list of five movies listed above, there’s a small difference in my
preference for Jaws or Children of Men, but a huge difference between Children of Men (which I enjoyed…twice!)
and The Sound of Music (which I do not like at all). This inability to tell how much is in between each variable is
one reason why other scales of measurement are usually preferred in statistics.

Ordinal Numbers in Set Theory.

Although “ordinal number” usually refer to values on a rating scale, it’s worth mentioning that they can have other
meanings outside of arithmetic and statistics. For example, an ordinal number in formal set theory is defined as “the
order type of a well ordered set” (Dauben 1990, p. 199; Moore 1982, p. 52; Suppes 1972, p. 129). In set theory,
ordinal numbers are represented with Arabic numerals or lower case Greek letters.
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3. Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio

Interval: has values of equal intervals that mean something. For example, a thermometer might have intervals of
ten degrees.

Examples:
 Celsius Temperature.
 Fahrenheit Temperature.
 IQ (intelligence scale).
 SAT scores.
  Time on a clock with hands.

4. Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio

Weight is measured on the ratio scale.

Ratio: exactly the same as the interval scale except that the zero on the scale means: does not exist. For example, a
weight of zero doesn’t exist; an age of zero doesn’t exist. On the other hand, temperature (with the exception of
Kelvin) is not a ratio scale, because zero exists (i.e. zero on the Celsius scale is just the freezing point; it doesn’t
mean that water ceases to exist).

Examples:
 Age.*
 Weight.
 Height.
 Sales Figures.
 Ruler measurements.
 Income earned in a week.
 Years of education.
 Number of children.
*It could be argued that age isn’t on the ratio scale, as age 0 is culturally determined. For example, Chinese people
also have a nominal age, which is tricky to calculate.
Interval and Ratio can
be Discreet or
continuous

Interval does have O

Ratio has no O