Types Of Data

CREDITSAnimation & Design: Waldi ApollisNarration: Lucy BillingsScript: Lucy BillingsHi, I’m Lucy and in this video, we are going to look at the different types of data that exist and how it can be classified. Starting with data collection... If data is collected by or for the company that is going to use it, it’s called primary data. If the data comes from somewhere else, it’s secondary data. Secondary data can have many benefits… like saving time and money, or providing information on past events. But you must carefully consider the reliability and validity of the source. This is true for all statistics. Whenever I read a statistic that interests me, I always check where the data came from and who funded it. Because quite often you’ll discover that there is an underlying ulterior motive. In fact, if there is one thing, I want you to take home with you, it is always to keep a critical eye on any data and “facts” you read or watch. Fact check everything, look at who is publishing the information. What is their motive? Are they neutral, or biased? But anyway, I slightly went off course there. So that’s primary and secondary data collection. Now for types of data. Data can be qualitative or quantitative. Things like gender, favourite colour, religion, opinions… anything that is non-numerical is qualitative. It’s descriptive information. Whereas numerical things… so things that can be quantified or counted… they’re quantitative data. Quantitative data can then be discrete or continuous... Discrete data can only take certain values. Like how many siblings you have… You can’t have 2.63 siblings. Whereas continuous data can take any value. It can be measured… like your height. You don’t have to be either 174cm or 175cm. You can be somewhere in between. Our final thing to discover is what is the difference between univariate and bivariate data... The prefix “uni” means “one” - like a unicorn with 1 horn, and a unicycle with 1 wheel. So univariate data is data with one variable. We can do different things with univariate and bivariate data… Which we will look at in other videos, and you can actually have data with more than 2 variables. This is then multivariate data, which we don’t really need to worry about at this stage. There we have different types of data. The question we are asking determines how we collect our data and how we then analyse it. Watch our other videos to learn about some of the different statistical tools we can then use.