MDM4U
MDM4U
Types of Data
MINDS ON
Record Your
Thoughts
For each of the following graphs,
describe one conclusion that you
could take from it:
ACTION
Categorical Data
What is the colour of your eyes? What
gender do you self-identify with? How
would you rate your perceived mental
health? These are all examples of
categorical data.
Ordinal Data
Definition: Ordinal data is categorical
data that can be ranked in a logical way.
Nominal Data
Definition: Nominal data is categorical
data that has no apparent order to the
data.
Nominal Data
Examples
Displaying Categorical
Data
Categorical data, both nominal and
ordinal can be displayed in either a bar
graph or a circle graph. If ordinal data is
displayed in a bar graph, the bars should
be in the order that makes sense with
respect to the data.
Record Some
Examples
1. Find an example of nominal
categorical data by doing an
internet search for circle graphs
and justify why the data is
considered nominal.
Numerical Data
How many days a week do you work?
How long does it take you to get to
school? The data collected by both of
these questions would be numerical data.
There are two types of numerical
data: continuous and discrete.
Continuous Data
Definition: Continuous data is data
that is obtained by measuring. You can
measure data in different ways, including
time and distance. Because there is
always a data point that can exist
between two data points and the
possibility of infinite data points,
measured data is continuous and
organized into intervals.
Example
How long does it take you to get to
school? Your answer here could be
20 minutes for example. Say the
intervals the data was being organized
into were: 15-20 minutes, 20-25
minutes and 25-30 minutes. What
interval would your time go into? You
would have to look at the accuracy of
your time. As a continuous data point,
20 minutes is either higher than 20
(20.000000001 for example) or lower
than 20 (19.999999999 for example).
So you would always be able to
decide which interval you belong to.
Discrete Data
Definition: Discrete data is data that is
obtained by counting. This type of data
was what you focused on in the first half
of this course. Discrete data points,
unlike continuous ones, do not have
points between points. There are a finite
number of possibilities.
Examples
1. How many heads do you get
when you flip a coin 3 times? The
only possibilities are 0,1,2 and 3.
There are no values between
these.
Example
The following outcomes are the
number of heads when flipping 3
coins. Display as a frequency bar
graph, frequency histogram,
probability bar graph, and a probability
histogram: 3, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 1
Probability Histogram
Frequency Histogram
Record Your
Observations
What do you notice about the 4
graphs above? Would any of them
give a different conclusion?
Conclusion
Example
The following are times that students
commute to school. To put an
emphasis on the fact that the data is
continuous, the data is recorded to 3
decimal places and represents the
number of minutes: 23.405, 24.774,
27.344, 21.412, 12.280, 26.799,
16.309, 15.857, 22.287, 2.521,
17.651, 13.518, 30.282, 18.478,
22.705, 19.999, 30.605, 20.835.
Histogram
Share
Conclusion
Record Some
Examples
1. Find an example of discrete
numerical data by doing an
internet search for bar graphs.
Share the graph and justify why
the data is considered discrete.
State one conclusion from the
graph.
Microdata vs.
Aggregate Data
One final difference in data can be seen
in the last example.
Scatterplot
Conclusion
CONSOLIDATION
Application and
Thinking
Use Stats Canada to find a data set
to display. Create a graph and make
one conclusion based on the graph.
Watch the following video for some
assistance.
StatsCanada to Sprea…