Definition:Category (Descriptive Statistics)

Definition

Let $Q$ be a qualitative variable.

Let $D$ be a finite set of $n$ observations of $Q$.

Let $D$ be partitioned into a finite set of subsets of $D$.

Each of the components of $D$ is known as a category.

Examples

Medical Diagnosis

Consider the context of medical diagnosis.

A set of patients may be diagnosed as either

• suffering from depression
• not suffering from depression.

Each of these diagnoses can be assigned to a category.

Also known as

A category, in the context of descriptive statistics, can also be seen referred to as a class.

Note that the term class is used on $\mathsf{Pr} \infty \mathsf{fWiki}$ as a synonym for class interval, which is used to classify a quantitative variable into ranges.

Also see

• Definition:Class Interval: the same concept for a quantitative variable

• Definition:Categorical Variable: a random variable whose values are taken from a set of categories

• Results about categories in the context of descriptive statistics can be found here.

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