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Statistics vocabulary · Data and Variables

Categorical variable

Meaning in statistics, with examples

nounCore term

In statistics, categorical variable means: A variable whose values are groups or labels rather than measured quantities, such as blood type, city of residence or 'yes/no' answers.

In Turkish: kategorik değişken, nitel değişken

How it is used

Split into nominal (no natural order: colour, nationality) and ordinal (ordered: education level, 'low/medium/high'). Summarised with counts and percentages, analysed with tests such as chi-square and entered into regression as dummy variables.

Example sentences

  1. Gender and region were entered as categorical variables in the model.

  2. You can't calculate a meaningful mean for a categorical variable like eye colour.

Common collocations

  • nominal variable
  • ordinal variable
  • dummy-code a categorical variable
  • categorical data
  • levels of a categorical variable
  • continuous variableA variable that can take any value within a range, including fractions, such as height, temperature, time or income.
  • variableAny characteristic that can take different values from one person, object or case to another, such as age, income, gender or test score.
  • chi-square testA test used with counts in categories, most often to check whether two categorical variables are related or whether observed frequencies match the expected ones.
  • cross-tabulationA table that shows how the categories of two or more categorical variables combine, with the number of cases in each combination.
  • frequencyThe number of times a value or category occurs in a data set; a relative frequency gives the same information as a proportion or percentage.

More terms: Data and Variables

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