Which term describes a variable made up of categories such as different universities?

Which term describes a variable made up of categories such as different universities?

• A. Continuous variable
• B. Categorical variable
• C. Ordinal variable
• D. Interval variable

Answer: (B)

A variable made up of categories like different universities is a categorical variable. The key idea is that the values are labels rather than numbers with mathematical meaning. There’s no natural order or distance between universities, so it’s not an ordinal variable. If you were using a numeric scale with meaningful intervals, you’d be dealing with interval or continuous variables, which isn’t the case here. (Even if you assign numbers to the universities, those numbers serve only as labels.)

A variable made up of categories like different universities is a categorical variable. The key idea is that the values are labels rather than numbers with mathematical meaning. There’s no natural order or distance between universities, so it’s not an ordinal variable. If you were using a numeric scale with meaningful intervals, you’d be dealing with interval or continuous variables, which isn’t the case here. (Even if you assign numbers to the universities, those numbers serve only as labels.)