Continuous vs Categorical Variable

  What is Variable?

A variable is something that is need to be measured. it is a type of recorded piece of information or characteristic about a person or case or unit in our study.

for Example: We might record the age of everyone in our sample and for every one we're recording the age but the age is going to change or vary from person to person so this is kind of the opposite of a constant which is always the same. for the sake of our discussion we have few examples like age , weight , BMI, does someone have disease, yes or no etc..

we summarize and analyze the data depend on type of variable we have. 

Type of variables:

1. Independent variable : It is also known as experimental or predictor variable. Independent variable is a variable that is the causes or reason of any situation which can be manipulated.

2. Dependent variable : Dependent variable is something that depends on their factors. It is also known as outcome variable.

for Example: Time spent studying causes a change in test mark.

here Time spent studying is independent variable. and Test mark is dependent variable.

Categorical variable vs Continuous variable

Categorical variable

Categorical variable is also known as discrete or qualitative variable.

There are three types of categorical variable:

1. Nominal : Nominal variables are variables which don't have an intrinsic order.

for Example: A real estate agent could classify their types of property into distinct categories such as houses, condos, bungalows  etc..

2. Ordinal : Ordinal variables are variables that can be ordered or ranked.

for Example: If we asked someone, if he liked the policies of a political party and he could answer "either not very much" , "they are ok" or "yes a lot", "yes or no".

3. Dichotomous : Dichotomous variables are nominal variables which have only two categories or levels.

for Example : if we were looking at gender we would most probably categorize somebody as either male or female. 

Continuous Variable

Continuous variable is also known as quantitative variable. This variable is not restricted to particular values.

There are two types of continuous variable

1. Interval or Discrete variable : Interval variables can be measured along a range or scale and they have a numerical value.

for Example : Temperature measured in degrees Celsius. here the difference between 10c to 20c is the same as 20c to 30c , BMI , Age.

2. Continuous or Ratio variable : Ratio variable reflects the fact that we can use the ratio of measurements.

for Example : A distance of 20m is twice the distance of 10m, weight.