Statistics for Data Science
by James C. Mott, Rajprasath Subramanian, Shaikh Salamatullah, James D. Miller, Vijayakumar Ramdoss
Categorical data
Earlier, we explained how variables in your data can be either independent or dependent. Another type of variable definition is a categorical variable. This type of variable is one that can take on one of a limited, and typically fixed, number of possible values, thus assigning each individual to a particular category.
Often, the collected data's meaning is unclear. Categorical data is a method that a data scientist can use to put meaning to the data.
For example, if a numeric variable is collected (let's say the values found are 4, 10, and 12), the meaning of the variable becomes clear if the values are categorized. Let's suppose that based upon an analysis of how the data was collected, we can group (or categorize) the ...
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