Categorical Univariate Analysis

Categorical variables

In this lesson, we will walk through some key plots for categorical univariate analysis, including their advantages and disadvantages. This lesson will add a variety of useful plots to your growing toolkit of visualizations.

A categorical variable is a type of variable that can take on one of a limited number of possible values, such as “black,” “white,” “blue,” or fruit types such as “Apple,” “Pear,” and “Banana.” There is no sense of order here, so we call this a nominal categorical variable. Another example of a categorical variable is a variable that takes on the values “good,” “great,” and “excellent.” Here there is a sense of order. Hence, we refer to this as an ordinal categorical variable.