Question

Distinguish between numerical data and categorical data.

a) Weights of twelve $6^{\text{th}}$ graders;

b) Hours of sleep that ten $6^{\text{th}}$ graders slept on a school night;

c) Number of hours spent by middle schoolers, playing video games over a week;

d) Video games played by students from a certain grade;

• A. All are numerical data.
• B. (a), (b) and (c) are numerical data, whereas (d) is a categorical data.
• C. Cannot be determined

Answer 1

The correct option is B (a), (b) and (c) are numerical data, whereas (d) is a categorical data.

Numerical data consists only numbers, whereas categorical data are non-numerical data, and it can be put in different categories.

Let's take a look at the provided types of data one by one.

a) Weights of twelve $6^{\text{th}}$ graders

$\bullet$ As weights are numbers, these are numerical data.

b) Hours of sleep that ten $6^{\text{th}}$ graders slept on a school night

$\bullet$ Number of hours of sleeping is numerical data.

c) Number of hours spent by middle schoolers playing video games over a week

$\bullet$ This represents numerical data as number of hours of spending on video games are numbers.

d) Video games played by students from a certain grade

​​​​​​​$\bullet$ As there are different types of games (action, puzzle, math games), they can be categorized. Hence, a data set consisting of the names of video games played by students of a certain grade is a categorical data.