1.2: SCALES OF MEASUREMENT
Nominal Scale - most primitive level of mesurement; used when we want to distinguish one object from nanother but the amount of difference cannot be determined
Examples:
Gender and nationality are in the nominal scale.
Alive or dead (fish) are also in the nominal scale.
Ordinal Scale - data are arranged in some specified order or rank; we can say that one is better or greater than the other; cannot tell how much more or how much less
Examples:
order of children in a family;
order of 10 fish according to their length (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc)
Interval Scale - the amount of difference between two data is known or specified
Example:
If John is 35 years old and Ben is only 6 years old, we can say that John is 29 years older than Ben.
Ratio Scale - similar to the interval scale, but always starts from an absolute or zero point; there is always the presence of measure
Example:
If John is 75 kg and Ben is only 25 kg, then we can say that John is three times heavier than Ben or that Ben is three times lighter than John.