What is equally, or more, important is _how_ you use the measurements. the number of children per family in the USA is now around 2.2. No family has 0.2 children. But we still consider that the number, 2.2, has meaning. Thus, the number of children per family is discrete, but it is used as a continuous variable.
If the software comes back with a smooth density curve, it may be programmed to do that. IN Excel you can get a bar (called column) chart or a scatter chart, depending on what you ask for. Excel doesn't know about discrete data - it simply processes it. Whether you attach meaning to the line in the chart, or the average value to 4 decimal places, is part of what is called 'interpretation.' It may not be valid to do so, but Excel doesn't know that.
Cheers, Jay
Casey wrote:
Hi, i needed some help in determining if some data i have are discrete or continuous, i know this sound silly, but if someone can provide the answer with some relevant proof, it will be much appreciated!!! I have a string of data that thier values ranges from 0 to 100000 or more, and values do not occur more than once, it looked discrete in the first place but when i use a statistic software to fit a distribution, the result is continuous, same happened when i do it manually using conventional distribution fitting and testing method methods (histogram, summary statistics, chi-square test and Kolmogorov-Smirov test). So are these data discrete? or continuous? Is there other ways or methods i can test the data? Will anyone please help, thank you for your time!! . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
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