3.1 Variables like age can utilize different levels of measurement. Give an exam

Question

3.1 Variables like age can utilize different levels of measurement. Give an example of how you could create a variable for AGE using each of level of measurement. If not possible, state why:

Continuous: ______________________________________   

Ordinal: _________________________________

Nominal: ________________________________   

3.2 Now try to come up with an example for temperature:

Continuous: ______________________________________

Ordinal: _________________________________________   

Nominal: _________________________________________   

3.3. Is it possible to do the same for standard race/ethnicity categories?

Continuous: ____________________________________________________   

Ordinal: _______________________________________________________

Nominal: ______________________________________________________   

Explanation / Answer

1. AGE

a. Continuous: It is possible. Consider 'age' of persons calculated in years, days, hours, seconds, and a further fraction. This is clearly a continuous scale measurement.

b. Ordinal: This is also possible. Consider the following levels:  Infant (0 - 2 years), Child (2+ - 12 years), Teenager (12+ - 19 years), Adult (19+) . These are categories with specific ordering from left to right.

c. Nominal: We may think of situations when this type of measurement does come up. Consider a colony of bacteria with some unknown growth law, and we are suspicious as to whether growth is more in every alternate hour. For this, we may define two classes. In a certain time point, if a bacterium ages an odd number of hours, it is in class 1, if the age is even then it is in class 2. These two categories do not have any specific ordering, hence nominal in nature.

2. TEMPERATURE

a. Continuous: Temperature of a system measured in any unit (say, Kelvin or degree Celsius etc.) and a further fraction of it is a typical example of this.

b. Ordinal: Suppose we are measuring the body temperature of a patient. Define the following categories: Low (<97 degree-Celcius), Normal (97-99 degree-Celcius), High (>99 degree-Celcius). This is an ordinal scale of measurement.

c. Nominal: Nominal scaling is not possible it is hard to think of a situation with categories of temperature without any inherent ordering in it.

3. RACE

Consider the three races: race-A, race-B, race-C.

a. Continuous: No inherent ordering is present in the three categories. So we can't think of a continuous scale of measurement here.

b. Ordinal: Again, the absence of an inherent ordering makes it impossible to think of an ordinal scale measurement.

c. Nominal: Categorising people as to whether he or she belongs to race A or B or C is a nominal scaling.

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