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In mathematics and statistics, a quantitative variable may be continuous or discrete if it is typically obtained by measuring or counting, respectively. [1] If it can take on two particular real values such that it can also take on all real values between them (including values that are arbitrarily or infinitesimally close together), the variable is continuous in that interval. [2]
Because variables conforming only to nominal or ordinal measurements cannot be reasonably measured numerically, sometimes they are grouped together as categorical variables, whereas ratio and interval measurements are grouped together as quantitative variables, which can be either discrete or continuous, due to their numerical nature.
Continuous probability distribution: Sometimes this term is used to mean a probability distribution whose cumulative distribution function (c.d.f.) is (simply) continuous. Sometimes it has a less inclusive meaning: a distribution whose c.d.f. is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. This less inclusive sense is equivalent to ...
This is useful because it puts deterministic variables and random variables in the same formalism. The discrete uniform distribution, where all elements of a finite set are equally likely. This is the theoretical distribution model for a balanced coin, an unbiased die, a casino roulette, or the first card of a well-shuffled deck.
Random variables are usually written in upper case Roman letters, such as or and so on. Random variables, in this context, usually refer to something in words, such as "the height of a subject" for a continuous variable, or "the number of cars in the school car park" for a discrete variable, or "the colour of the next bicycle" for a categorical variable.
Examples are found in experiments whose sample space is non-numerical, where the distribution would be a categorical distribution; experiments whose sample space is encoded by discrete random variables, where the distribution can be specified by a probability mass function; and experiments with sample spaces encoded by continuous random ...
For n independent and identically distributed discrete random variables X 1, X 2, ..., X n with cumulative distribution function G(x) and probability mass function g(x) the range of the X i is the range of a sample of size n from a population with distribution function G(x).
An example of such distributions could be a mix of discrete and continuous distributions—for example, a random variable that is 0 with probability 1/2, and takes a random value from a normal distribution with probability 1/2.