statistical data type

In statistics, groups of individual data points may be classified as belonging to any of various statistical data types, e.g. categorical ("red", "blue", "green"), real number (1.68, -5, 1.7e+6), etc. The data type is a fundamental component of the semantic content of the variable, and controls which sorts of probability distributions can logically be used to describe the variable, the permissible operations on the variable, the type of regression analysis used to predict the variable, etc. The concept of data type is similar to the concept of level of measurement, but more specific: For example, count data require a different distribution (e.g. a Poisson distribution or binomial distribution) than non-negative real-valued data require, but both fall under the same level of measurement (a ratio scale).