Waters\' Edge is a clothing retailer that promotes its products via catalog and

Question

Waters' Edge is a clothing retailer that promotes its products via catalog and accepts customer orders by all of the conventional ways including the Internet. The company has gained a competitive advantage by collecting data about its operations and the customer each time an order is processed.


Among the data collected with each order are: number of items ordered, total shipping weight of the order, whether or not all items ordered were available in inventory, time taken to process the order, customer 's number of prior orders in the last 12 months, and method of payment. For each of the six aforementioned variables, identify which of the variables are discrete and which are continuous.

Explanation / Answer

Discrete variables describe a finite set of conditions and take values from a finite, usually small, set of states. An example of a discrete variable is Success of the venture, defined in our tutorial on Bayesian networks. This variable can take two values: Success and Failure. Another example might be a variable Hepatitis-B, assuming values True and False. Yet another is Financial gain assuming three values: $10K, $20K, and $50K. Continuous variables can assume an infinite number of values. An example of a continuous variable is Body temperature, assuming any value between 30 and 45 degrees Celsius. Another might be Financial gain, assuming any monetary value between zero and $50K.

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