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Data Science & Analytics vocabulary · Statistics for Analysis

Variable

Meaning in data science & analytics, with examples

/ˈveriəbəl/nounCore term

In data science & analytics, variable means: A characteristic that can take different values from one case to another, such as age, city or price; in a table it is usually one column.

In Turkish: değişken

How it is used

You measure, create, recode or compare variables. They are described as numeric or categorical, continuous or discrete, dependent or independent. In programming, 'variable' also means a named value in the code.

Example sentences

  1. Region is a categorical variable, so we can't take its average.

  2. Let's create a new variable for the number of days between sign-up and first purchase.

Common collocations

  • categorical variable
  • numeric variable
  • dependent variable
  • create a variable
  • featureIn modelling, one of the input variables a model uses to make predictions, such as a customer's age, number of purchases or days since last login.
  • target variableThe value a model is trained to predict, such as whether a customer will churn or how much they will spend; also called the label or dependent variable.
  • distributionThe way the values of a variable are spread out, showing which values are common, which are rare and how far apart they are; often viewed as a histogram.
  • correlationA relationship between two variables in which they tend to change together, often measured by a coefficient from -1 to 1, where 0 means no linear relationship.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Statistics for Analysis

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