Types of data

By: Dr Hayat Khan

 Types of Data

Ordinal Data (ranked

Numerical Data (quantitative/interval data) Nominal Data (categorical data)
data)

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Numerical data
• The values of numerical data are real numbers.
• E.g. income,
• heights, weights, prices, waiting time at a medical practice, etc.
Numerical data

• Allowed:
• It is meaningful to talk about 2*income, or income+ $10, and so on.
Arithmetic operations:

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Nominal data

• The values of nominal data are categories.

• E.g. Responses to questions about marital status coded as:

Nominal Data
• Single = 1, Married = 2, Divorced = 3, Widowed = 4

• arithmetic operations don’t make any sense (e.g. does Married ÷ 2 =

Divorced?!)
Arithmetic
• No calculations are allowed except counting the number of observations in each category

Operations: and calculating their proportions.

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 Ordinal data
• categorical with an order or ranking to them:
• e.g. University course evaluation system: Poor = 1, fair = 2, good = 3, very good = 4,

excellent = 5
Ordinal data:

• Not meaningful. (e.g. does it make sense to say 2*fair = very

good?!),

Arithmetic • It is meaningful to say that excellent > poor or fair < very good
Calculation: