Types of data

Before we learn anything else about statistics, we need to understand types of data.

There are two main categories of data, quantitative (quant-i-ta-tive) and qualitative (qual-it-a-tive).

Quantitative is like the word quantity and describes how many of something there is or some other information, like the length for example, in numbers. Quantitative data is numerical.

Qualitative is like the word quality and describes the characteristics of something. The descriptions are in words. A review of a film is qualitative information, so is the colour of a car.