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An ordinal categorical variable is often used in questions for which the responses can be put into some kind of natural order but where the difference between categories is not the same. One example may be where the respondent is asked to class statements as "disagree strongly", "disagree", "neither disagree nor agree", "agree", and "agree strongly". There is a natural progression in the response but the difference between "disagree strongly" and "neither ... " [2 steps] may not be the same as that between "disagree" and "agree" [also 2 steps].
The results of any analyses which attaches numerical value to the answers for processing is sensitive to the coding system used. The results with the answers coded as {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} will be quite different to those coded {1, 4, 10, 20, 25}.
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Is rank in the army a categorical variable?
Yes it is. It is an ordinal variable ( which means it is meaningful ) because rank has an order and it is meaningful to rank the soldiers.
Are eye colors ordinal data?
no, they are categorical
Is birthday a categorical variable?
No, date of birth is an ordinal variable. Ordinal variables are similar to categorical variables except that an ordering of the values is possible. With date of birth there are obviously many possible day/month/year "categories" but they are discrete and can clearly be ordered from highest to lowest or vice versa.A categorical variable might be something like animal type. Each animal type fits into a class, but there's no intrinsic ordering of cow, sheep, pig for example.Date of birth itself is not an interval variable either. It doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about "average date of birth" for example. But of course, date of birth can be convertedto an interval variable (i.e. age) simply by subtracting it from another date (e.g. today's date).
What is the difference between continuous and categorical independent variables?
A categorical variable (also known as a discrete variable) is one whose range is countable; e.g. the variable answ has values [yes, no, not sure]. answ is a categorical variable with range 3.A continuous variable is one which is not categorical; e.g. weight is a continuous variable which can take any value between 0 and 1000 kg (say) for a human being.
Difference between dummy and categorical variable?
A dummy variable assumes a value of either 0 or 1. A categorical variable assumes one of a usually small number of values. For example, a categorical variable might assume the values 'F' or 'M' for female or male.
