![]() Data held within a database such as a relational database or a graph database is structured data, as is data held in CSV files (comma-separated values). ![]() Of course, because we are dealing with data, it gets more complicated in that there are many different ways of organising data in a structured way. Structured data conforms to a data model, a very well defined way of organising the data that makes the data easy to search and manipulate by a computer. Actually, all data has some structure - it wouldn’t be data without some structure - so this distinction is really a computer’s view of data. Structured and unstructuredĪnother way to think about data is to consider whether the data is structured or unstructured. ![]() If we intend to perform statistical tests on data it is important to know whether the data is quantitative or qualitative because different tests are used. For example we might be interested in different categories of fish: cod, herring and trout, or about sizes of clothes: xxs, xs, s,m,l,xl and xxl. Qualitative data is data that cannot be represented numerically. The latter is known as continuous because things like temperature are continuous and 20.5☌ makes perfect sense. The first of these examples is known as discrete, as each value is distinct you can’t really have half a person working for a company (and which half, the top half?). Quantitative data, as its name implies, is about data that can be clearly quantified, such as the number of people working for a company, or the day’s temperature. You have to have your teeth in to pronounce these with ease! We are going to talk about broad categories of data, which may be thought of or handled differently, and it’s still complicated! Qualitative and quantitative These various types and ways to talk about data makes data just plain complicated and we’re not even going right down into the weeds to talk about data types – things like integers, strings and floating point. There are lots of different ways to talk about the various data types and how to crumble the cookie. The term ‘data’ tends to be applied to whole data sets or groups of data. So in general usage, it can be used as singular and plural. So true of Latin but English is about as well-organised and well-constructed as the average Excel spreadsheet (for those who rarely, if ever, use Excel, the answer is not very). Is data plural or singular? Ah, you say, datum is singular so data must be plural, QED. (Definition source: Cambridge Dictionary) One data or lots of data?
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