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Statistics vocabulary · Data and Variables

Variable

Meaning in statistics, with examples

/ˈveriəbəl/nounCore term

In statistics, variable means: Any characteristic that can take different values from one person, object or case to another, such as age, income, gender or test score.

In Turkish: değişken

How it is used

The basic building block of any data set: in a spreadsheet, variables are usually the columns and cases the rows. You measure, code, recode, create and transform variables; types include categorical, continuous, independent and dependent.

Example sentences

  1. We recoded the age variable into four groups.

  2. Which variables did you include in the final model?

Common collocations

  • measure a variable
  • recode a variable
  • outcome variable
  • key variables
  • create a new variable
  • categorical variableA variable whose values are groups or labels rather than measured quantities, such as blood type, city of residence or 'yes/no' answers.
  • continuous variableA variable that can take any value within a range, including fractions, such as height, temperature, time or income.
  • independent variableThe variable that a researcher changes, controls or uses to explain changes in another variable; in an experiment it is the factor being manipulated.
  • dependent variableThe outcome a study measures to see whether it changes when the independent variable changes, such as test scores, sales or recovery time.
  • observationA single unit of data, such as one person, one transaction or one measurement, usually shown as one row in a data set.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Data and Variables

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