How can nominal variable be numeric

Example: One million, two hundred thirty-four thousand, five hundred sixty-seven and eighty-nine hundredths Note about comma versus dot notation: comma notation is standard in the United States. Oracle's International Language Environments Guide gives a list of countries and what form of notation is typically found in each. Numeric variables whose values are displayed with an E and power-of-ten exponent. Exponents can be preceded by either an E or a D, with or without a sign, or only with a sign no E or D.

SPSS will recognize these values as numeric, with or without an exponent. Numeric variables that are displayed in any standard calendar date or clock-time formats. Standard formats may include commas, blank spaces, hyphens, periods, or slashes as space delimiters. Numeric variables that contain a dollar sign i. Commas may be used to delimit every three places, and a period can be used to delimit decimals. Numeric variables that are displayed in a custom currency format.

You must define the custom currency in the Variable Type window. Custom currency characters are displayed in the Data Editor but cannot be used during data entry. Numeric variables whose values are restricted to non-negative integers in standard format or scientific notation. The values are displayed with leading zeroes padded to the maximum width of the variable.

Search this Guide Search. It also dictates what type of statistical analysis methods are appropriate for that data. This tutorial covers the variable types that SPSS recognizes. Variable Types In order for your data analysis to be accurate, it is imperative that you correctly identify the type and formatting of each variable. Numeric Numeric variables, as you might expect, have data values that are recognized as numbers. All of the following are examples of variables that could be entered as numeric variables in an SPSS dataset: Example: Continuous variables that can take on any number in a range e.

String String variables -- which are also called alphanumeric variables or character variables -- have values that are treated as text. Comma Numeric variables that include commas that delimit every three places to the left of the decimals and use a period to delimit decimals. Example: Thirty-thousand and one half: 30, Example: Thirty-thousand and one half: Scientific notation Numeric variables whose values are displayed with an E and power-of-ten exponent.

Example: 1. Date Numeric variables that are displayed in any standard calendar date or clock-time formats. Restricted number Numeric variables whose values are restricted to non-negative integers in standard format or scientific notation. Example: width These also can be ordered as elementary school, high school, some college, and college graduate. Even though we can order these from lowest to highest, the spacing between the values may not be the same across the levels of the variables.

Say we assign scores 1, 2, 3 and 4 to these four levels of educational experience and we compare the difference in education between categories one and two with the difference in educational experience between categories two and three, or the difference between categories three and four.

The difference between categories one and two elementary and high school is probably much bigger than the difference between categories two and three high school and some college. In this example, we can order the people in level of educational experience but the size of the difference between categories is inconsistent because the spacing between categories one and two is bigger than categories two and three.

If these categories were equally spaced, then the variable would be an interval variable. An interval variable is similar to an ordinal variable, except that the intervals between the values of the numerical variable are equally spaced.

Statistical computations and analyses assume that the variables have a specific levels of measurement. For example, it would not make sense to compute an average hair color. An average of a nominal variable does not make much sense because there is no intrinsic ordering of the levels of the categories.

Moreover, if you tried to compute the average of educational experience as defined in the ordinal section above, you would also obtain a nonsensical result. Because the spacing between the four levels of educational experience is very uneven, the meaning of this average would be very questionable. In short, an average requires a variable to be numerical. In figure 1, the numeric rating scale is used to record pain for each group at each time point in the study. In this case, pain is a numerical variable.

However, in figure 2, pain intensity is analyzed in different categories—none, mild, moderate, severe. In this case, pain is an ordinal variable. Because the variable types are different in each case, the statistical test used to calculate results will be different as well. It is very important to properly identify the type of variables used to analyze data in order to choose the correct statistical tests when calculating results.

Nominal, ordinal, or numerical variables? All images used within the blog are not available for reuse or republication as they are purchased for Students 4 Best Evidence from shutterstock.

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What are the key steps in EBM?