Variability for Categorical Variables

Introductory statistics textbooks rarely discuss the concept of variability for a categorical variable and thus, in this case, do not provide a measure of variability. The impression is thus given that there is no measurement of variability for a categorical variable. A measure of variability depends on the concept of variability. Research has shown that “unalikeability” is a more natural concept than “variation about the mean” for many students. A “coefficient of unalikeablity” can be used to measure this type of variability. Variability in categorical data is different from variability in quantitative data. This paper develops the coefficient of unalikeability as a measure of categorical variability.

• Publication year

  2007

• Venue

  Journal of Statistics Education

• Publication date

  2007-07-01

• Fields of study

  Mathematics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/10691898.2007.11889465
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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