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Q: What are the appropriate measures of variability for ordinal data?
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What is the pattern of a variability within a data set called?

The range, inter-quartile range (IQR), mean absolute deviation [from the mean], variance and standard deviation are some of the many measures of variability.


IS GPA nominal data or ordinal?

It is ordinal.


What is ordinal statistics?

Ordinal statistics or data is classified as ordinal if the values can be rated on a scale or put i order. Ordinal data can be counted but never measured.


What is the appropriate measure of variability for ordinal data?

This is a surprisingly difficult question, partly perhaps because of the ambiguous term 'ordinal'. For instance, horse-race finishes are ordinal--horses usually finish first, second, etc., with no ties; pure order data gives no information about gaps between horses. For such data--the purest form of ordinal data--talk about variability is meaningless. You need data with 'ties' or repeated 'values'--more cases than ordered categories--to talk about variability meaningfully. If you do have repeated values, one option is to fall back and use nominal variability measures--the Index of Qualitative Variation is one; information statistics also work; and there's always the frequency/percentage table. They don't 'measure' concentration along the categoric order, obviously. Disappointingly many websites recommend using the range or interquartile range, presumably calculated by assigning numbers to the ordered categories and subtracting. These indices are very dangerous if you assume only qualitative order among categories. This is obviously flawed--if you don't know how far categories are separated, subtracting numbers is flat invalid. For instance, rank states in the US by size--Alaska is 1, RI is 50--and consider the fact that a group from AK, TX, and CA has a range of 2 and a group from NJ and MA has range of 3 [47 - 44]. First, those numbers are really meaningless; second, they sure misrepresent relations among state size differences. Unless you trust that your 'ordinal' categories are pretty close to equal intervals apart--what we call 'quasi-interval'--you simply cannot use range validly to measure ordinal variability. The same reasoning applies to inter-quartile range. You might as well use variance, since describing 'skew' and 'outliers' for ordinal data is very dangerous, itself. More valid ordinal measures do exist--I cannot recall them. But when you choose an index, take care to examine how it is treating the numbers or other ordering symbols it trades on. Invalidity is rife.


Is asking your birth year a ordinal data?

No, but the answers provide ordinal data.


What two data characteristics are usually measured using numerical descriptive measures?

Variability and Central Tendency (Stats Student)


What is the best measure of variability?

The best measure of variability depends on the specific characteristics of the data. Common measures include the range, standard deviation, and variance. The choice of measure should be made based on the distribution of the data and the research question being addressed.


Should The mean or median be used in ordinal data?

The median is used when reporting ordinal data.


Which is an appropriate display to show the measures of variation for a data set?

There are a number of appropriate displays to show the measures of variation for a data set. Different graphs can be used for this purpose which may include histograms, stemplots, dotplots and boxplots among others.


What are the advantages and disadvantages transforming of continuous data into either discrete or ordinal data?

1.) Discrete: restricted to integers; ordinal subjective


True or false Data at the ordinal level are quantitative only?

False. Data at the ordinal level can be either quantitative or qualitative. In ordinal data, the categories have a meaningful order or rank, but the difference between the categories is not necessarily equal.


How does finding the IQR hep you identify the variability of set of data?

The IQR gives the range of the middle half of the data and, in that respect, it is a measure of the variability of the data.