About
A (statistician|data miner) studying a population would be interested in collecting information about different characteristics of the subject (like their length, or weight, or age) in a sample. Those characteristics are called variables.
In a database, they are just columns.
They can take on multiple values. In contrast, a constant has only one value
A variable have:
- and a usage
In mathematics, variables are listed among the arguments that the function takes.
Articles Related
Data Type
Variables (of an instance) are of two types:
- discrete (called nominal, categorical or qualitative)
- or continuous (called numeric, numerical or quantitative).
and have 4 levels
Categorical
When a characteristic can be neatly placed into well-defined groups, or categories that do not depend on order, it is called a categorical variable (some statisticians use the word qualitative).
Numerical
When we are interested in the total number of each species of tortoise, or how many individuals there are per square kilometre. This type of variable is called numerical (or quantitative).
Usage
| Type of attribute | Type of model | Description |
|---|---|---|
| independent variable (predictors|feature) | supervised | Predictors that affect a given outcome |
| dependent variable (outcome,…) | supervised | outcome that are affected by predictors |
| descriptors | (unsupervised|descriptive) | Items of information being analysed for natural groupings or associations. |
Variable Name Glossary
| Dependent variable | Independent variable |
|---|---|
| Dependent | Independent |
| Outcome | Predictor |
| … |
Others
Missing Value
Case id
A Case Id identifies uniquely each record in order to help with model repeatability.