What is a categorical variable?

A categorical variable, which is also referred to as a nominal variable, is a type of variable that can have two or more groups or categories that can be assigned. There is no order to categories that can be assigned to a variable. In other words, categories cannot be put in order from the highest to the lowest. An example of a categorical variable is a race that has many different categories, but there are no orders for them.

One way to determine the type of variable is whether it is quantitative or qualitative. It can be measured by quantitative variable and has a specific numeric value. Examples of quantitative variables include height, weight, age, salary, temperature, etc. Any variables that are not quantitative, are qualitative or categorical variable. These types of variables have no numeric significance when measured or observed, and include things like hair color, eye color, gender, city of birth, etc.And they have specific categories that describe them. The difference between the categorical variable and the ordinal variable is that it has an internal order. For example, a survey may apply for respondents to evaluate the statement as bad, good and excellent. These are categorical variables, but there is an obvious order, so they are actually ordinal variables.

data tables are usually used to analyze data that are categorically grouped. Two categorical variables can be measured and compared with a two -way data table. For example, hair and sex color could be measured for a group of individuals. The categorical variables that would be observed and recorded would be whether a person is a male or a woman and what his hair is his hair. In the table, the number of observations would be entered for each group for these two variables into rows and columns based on the data collected.

Bar Charts are often used asGraphic method of analyzing categorical variable data. The observed data can be entered as raw numbers or as a percentage that is preferred. With the column chart is displayed for each group.

In the above example, the column chart can represent the number of men or women or the number of individuals in each category of hair color. The segmented column chart can provide the way of displaying numbers captured during observation instead of a straight sum for each group. Using the same hair color and gender data, a segmented column chart could show how many men and women of each hair color were observed.