Quantitative versus qualitative data
When you ask a data scientist, "what type of data is this?", they will usually assume that you are asking them whether or not it is mostly quantitative or qualitative. It is likely the most common way of describing the specific characteristics of a dataset.
For the most part, when talking about quantitative data, you are usually (not always) talking about a structured dataset with a strict row/column structure (because we don't assume unstructured data even has any characteristics). All the more reason why the preprocessing step is so important.
These two data types can be defined as follows:
- Quantitative data: This data can be described using numbers, and basic mathematical procedures, including addition, are ...
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