Ordinal Variable

Definition

An ordinal variable is a type of categorical variable that has a natural order or ranking. The categories can be ranked or ordered based on some characteristic or attribute.

Analogy

Imagine you are organizing a race with different participants. You want to assign medals to the winners, so you create an ordinal variable called "Race Ranking." Each participant gets assigned a number (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) based on their finishing position. The numbers represent the order in which they finished the race!

Related terms

Nominal Variable: A nominal variable is another type of categorical variable where categories have no inherent order or ranking.

Likert Scale: A Likert scale is a common example of an ordinal variable used in surveys to measure attitudes or opinions on a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Rank Correlation Coefficient: This statistical measure quantifies the strength and direction of the relationship between two sets of rankings.