Numerical and Categorical Data

Attempt to help provide clarity for identifying data types.

Identifying Numerical and Categorical data type is very much essential in Data Analysis.

For the beginners, the nomenclature (Numerical and Categorical) would be confusing to identify or categorize the data among Numerical & Categorical.

Simple reason being that numbers can be Categorical data as well. Hence don’t conclude the data type by it’s appearance.

Simple example:

Let us identify data category in the table below :-

Most of them, more or less would classify as above.

However right identification would be

Surprised😮 …!!!. Yes.

I felt the same and had lot of argument on this identification. Later I found that Numerical and Categorical data can also be called as Quantitative and Qualitative data respectively which came as savior for my all confusions and made a clear logical sense.

No wonder for the reason behind existence of alternate terminology 😉.

What is Numerical in other term Quantitative data? if you understand this, Categorical (Qualitative) is easy.

Numerical or Quantitative data : Values for which arithmetic operations (e.g., addition or averaging) make sense. Examples: age, height, Total score, SAT score.

In the above example; Minimum, Maximum and Avgerage of “Total score” makes sense i.e we can use them for deriving some logical conclusion based on the application than that of Jersy#, Pin code or Rank.

Categorical or Quantitative data: Places an individual into one of several groups or categories. Examples: eye color, race, gender. May have numerical values assigned: 1=White, 2=Hispanic, 3=Asian, etc. Other numeric categorical variables include baseball jersey number or pin code.

Final thought:

I would strongly suggest to replace Numerical with Quantitative mentally whenever you come across data identification.

These data also sub grouped as below which is pretty much self explanatory once you have high level of the above understanding.

Easy Identification Chart:

References:

1. https://legac.com.au/blogs/further-mathematics-exam-revision/further-mathematics-unit-3-data-analysis-types-of-data
2. https://www.hazlet.org/userfiles/415/my%20files/ap%20statistics%20summer%20packet%202018.pdf?id=6954#:~:text=Quantitative%3A%20Has%20numerical%20values%20for,eye%20color%2C%20race%2C%20gender