Categorical Variable

Definition

A categorical variable is one that represents characteristics or qualities rather than numerical values. It consists of categories or groups into which data can be classified.

Analogy

Think of categorical variables as different flavors of ice cream. Each flavor represents a category, and you can classify people's preferences into these categories without assigning any numerical value to them.

Related terms

Nominal Scale: It is a measurement scale where data is categorized into distinct groups with no specific order or ranking.

Ordinal Variable: An ordinal variable has categories with some natural order or ranking but does not have equal intervals between them.

Frequency Table: A frequency table displays how often each category occurs in a dataset by counting occurrences for each category.