Data can be broadly categorized into two types:
- Discrete (or categorical): Any value that denotes a category is considered a discrete variable. Examples of discrete variables include most nouns such as fruits, colors, school grades, countries and genders.
- Continuous (or quantitative): Continuous numbers are numerical quantities on which you can perform arithmetic operations. This includes variables such as weather, temperatures, amounts, and time.
You may also hear of a couple of other variations of data types, which are but sub-categories of either discrete or continuous variables, as follows:
- Ordinal (discrete variable): This indicates data that has an order. For example, if we were to rank scores as first, second, and ...
