Introduction – Importance of Data
Today data is everywhere in every field. Whether you are a data scientist, marketer,
businessman, data analyst, researcher, or you are in any other profession, you need to play or
experiment with raw or structured data. This data is so important for us that it becomes important
to handle and store it properly, without any error. While working on these data, it is important to
know the types of data to process them and get the right results. There are two types of data:
Qualitative and Quantitative data, which are further classified into:
The data is classified into four categories:
Nominal data.
Ordinal data.
Discrete data.
Continuous data.
Types of Data
Qualitative or Categorical Data
Qualitative or Categorical Data is data that can’t be measured or counted in the form of numbers.
These types of data are sorted by category, not by number. That’s why it is also known as
Categorical Data. These data consist of audio, images, symbols, or text. The gender of a person,
i.e., male, female, or others, is qualitative data.
Qualitative data tells about the perception of people. This data helps market researchers
understand the customers’ tastes and then design their ideas and strategies accordingly.
The other examples of qualitative data are :
What language do you speak
Favorite holiday destination
Opinion on something (agree, disagree, or neutral)
Colors
The Qualitative data are further classified into two parts :
Nominal Data
Nominal Data is used to label variables without any order or quantitative value. The color of hair
can be considered nominal data, as one color can’t be compared with another color.
The name “nominal” comes from the Latin name “nomen,” which means “name.” With the help
of nominal data, we can’t do any numerical tasks or can’t give any order to sort the data. These
data don’t have any meaningful order; their values are distributed into distinct categories.
Examples of Nominal Data :
Colour of hair (Blonde, red, Brown, Black, etc.)
Marital status (Single, Widowed, Married)
Nationality (Indian, German, American)
Gender (Male, Female, Others)
Eye Color (Black, Brown, etc.)
Ordinal Data
Ordinal data have natural ordering where a number is present in some kind of order by their
position on the scale. These data are used for observation like customer satisfaction, happiness,
etc., but we can’t do any arithmetical tasks on them.
Ordinal data is qualitative data for which their values have some kind of relative position. These
kinds of data can be considered “in-between” qualitative and quantitative data. The ordinal data
only shows the sequences and cannot use for statistical analysis. Compared to nominal data,
ordinal data have some kind of order that is not present in nominal data.
Examples of Ordinal Data :
When companies ask for feedback, experience, or satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10
Letter grades in the exam (A, B, C, D, etc.)
Ranking of people in a competition (First, Second, Third, etc.)
Economic Status (High, Medium, and Low)
Education Level (Higher, Secondary, Primary)
Difference between Nominal and Ordinal Data
Nominal Data Ordinal Data
Nominal data can’t be quantified,
Ordinal data gives some kind of sequential
neither they have any intrinsic
order by their position on the scale
ordering
Nominal data is qualitative data or Ordinal data is said to be “in-between”
categorical data qualitative data and quantitative data
They don’t provide any quantitative They provide sequence and can assign numbers
value, neither can we perform any to ordinal data but cannot perform the
arithmetical operation arithmetical operation
Nominal data cannot be used to Ordinal data can help to compare one item with
compare with one another another by ranking or ordering
Examples: Eye color, housing style,
Examples: Economic status, customer
gender, hair color, religion, marital
satisfaction, education level, letter grades, etc
status, ethnicity, etc
Quick Check – Introduction to Data Science
Quantitative Data
Quantitative data can be expressed in numerical values, making it countable and including
statistical data analysis. These kinds of data are also known as Numerical data. It answers the
questions like “how much,” “how many,” and “how often.” For example, the price of a phone,
the computer’s ram, the height or weight of a person, etc., falls under quantitative data.
Quantitative data can be used for statistical manipulation. These data can be represented on a
wide variety of graphs and charts, such as bar graphs, histograms, scatter plots, boxplots, pie
charts, line graphs, etc.
Examples of Quantitative Data :
Height or weight of a person or object
Room Temperature
Scores and Marks (Ex: 59, 80, 60, etc.)
Time
The Quantitative data are further classified into two parts :
Discrete Data
The term discrete means distinct or separate. The discrete data contain the values that fall under
integers or whole numbers. The total number of students in a class is an example of discrete data.
These data can’t be broken into decimal or fraction values.
The discrete data are countable and have finite values; their subdivision is not possible. These
data are represented mainly by a bar graph, number line, or frequency table.
Examples of Discrete Data :
Total numbers of students present in a class
Cost of a cell phone
Numbers of employees in a company
The total number of players who participated in a competition
Days in a week
Continuous Data
Continuous data are in the form of fractional numbers. It can be the version of an android phone,
the height of a person, the length of an object, etc. Continuous data represents information that
can be divided into smaller levels. The continuous variable can take any value within a range.
The key difference between discrete and continuous data is that discrete data contains the integer
or whole number. Still, continuous data stores the fractional numbers to record different types of
data such as temperature, height, width, time, speed, etc.
Examples of Continuous Data :
Height of a person
Speed of a vehicle
“Time-taken” to finish the work
Wi-Fi Frequency
Market share price
Difference between Discrete and Continuous Data
Discrete Data Continuous Data
Discrete data are countable and finite; Continuous data are measurable; they are in
they are whole numbers or integers the form of fractions or decimal
Discrete data are represented mainly by Continuous data are represented in the form
bar graphs of a histogram
The values cannot be divided into The values can be divided into subdivisions
subdivisions into smaller pieces into smaller pieces
Discrete data have spaces between the Continuous data are in the form of a
values continuous sequence
Examples: Total students in a class,
Example: Temperature of room, the weight
number of days in a week, size of a shoe,
of a person, length of an object, etc
etc
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the data types and their differences. Working on data is crucial
because we need to figure out what kind of data it is and how to use it to get valuable output out
of it. It is also important to know what kind of plot is suitable for which data category; it helps in
data analysis and visualization. Working with data requires good data science skills and a deep
understanding of different types of data and how to work with them.
Different types of data are used in research, analysis, statistical analysis, data visualization, and
data science. This data helps a company analyze its business, design its strategies, and help build
a successful data-driven decision-making process.
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