Categorical (variable)

A variable is said to be categorical (or "nominal") if :

        1) It can take only a few values (often called "categories").

        2) There is no clear relationship between these values.

Some examples of categorical variables are : 

• "Profession", with the categories : "Manager", "Employee", "Engineer", "Farmer".
• "Marital Status", with categories :"Bachelor", "Married", "Divorced", "Widow".

 Predicting the value of a categorical variable is called classification.

See also: Ordinal, Numerical, Binary.