Question

1. Define each of the levels of measurement in detail (what are the characteristics of each) in order, giving an example for each. Explain how your choice is an example of the scale level.

2. Why is the combination of the measures of central tendency and measures of variation so informative about a data set. Explain how they work together to provide a complete picture.

Answer 1

1.

There are four types of level of measurements as written below:

1. Nominal – The categorical or classified data has Nominal level of measurement. For example: Gender(Male or Female), Hair Color(Brown, Black, Gray, Other), Religion(Christianity, Islam, Buddhist, Hinduism, Sikhism, Other) . Measure of central tendency for this type of data is mode.

2. Ordinal – The data which has ranking in itself is follows ordinal level of measurement. For example: Level of Education(School, Graduation, Post-Graduation, Phd, other) here we have four categories of education. In this case we know that Graduation is better than School, Post-Graduation is better than Graduation, and Phd is better than Post-Graduation but we cannot say how better they are with each other. Hence, they can be represented as an “order” whether decreasing order or increasing order. Measure of central tendency for this type of data is either mode or median but it can never be the mean.

3. Interval – The data which has ranking in itself with known differences between the values can be measured has interval level of measurement. For example: Temperature can be represented as 2 degree Celsius, 3 degree Celsius, and 5 degree Celsius. Here the difference between each temperature level and its consecutive level is equal. The most important thing about this data is if it includes the zero level but does not refer to the absence of it. For example: Zero degree Celsius has some physical meaning. Measure of central tendency for this type of data can be mean, median, and mode.

4. Ratio – The data which follows all the property of all the data types including the zero means the absence follows ratio level of measurement. For example: You have $5, $10, etc. in your purse it represents Ratio Data because if you remove all the dollar amounts from your purse it means you have zero dollars, which implies the absence of cash.

2.

The combination of the measures of central tendency and measures of variation are very informative about a data set because using these two measurements we can understand the average value around which all the values are lying and the distance of all values from that average on an average.

Good luck with your studies!!!