Definition:Nominal Variable

Definition

A nominal variable is a categorical variable whose values have no natural ordering.

Examples

Marital Status

Let $X$ be a random variable whose values take on various classifications of marital status:

$\set {\text {single}, \text {married}, \text {widowed}, \text {divorced} }$

Then $X$ is classed as a nominal variable.

Also see

• Definition:Ordinal Variable

• Results about nominal variables can be found here.

Sources

• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): contingency table
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): categorical variable
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): contingency table