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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]
Unlike a continuous-time signal, a discrete-time signal is not a function of a continuous argument; however, it may have been obtained by sampling from a continuous-time signal. When a discrete-time signal is obtained by sampling a sequence at uniformly spaced times, it has an associated sampling rate.
Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that are fundamentally discrete rather than continuous.In contrast to real numbers that have the property of varying "smoothly", the objects studied in discrete mathematics – such as integers, graphs, and statements in logic [1] – do not vary smoothly in this way, but have distinct, separated values. [2]
Furthermore, it covers distributions that are neither discrete nor continuous nor mixtures of the two. 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.
In applied mathematics, discrete modelling is the discrete analogue of continuous modelling. In discrete modelling, discrete formulae are fit to data. A common method in this form of modelling is to use recurrence relation. Discretization concerns the process of transferring continuous models and equations into discrete counterparts, often for ...
A mixed random variable is a random variable whose cumulative distribution function is neither discrete nor everywhere-continuous. [10] It can be realized as a mixture of a discrete random variable and a continuous random variable; in which case the CDF will be the weighted average of the CDFs of the component variables. [10]
A random variable X is also called continuous if its set of possible values is uncountable, and the chance that it takes any particular value is zero (in symbols, if P(X = x) = 0 for every real number x). A random variable is continuous if and only if its cumulative probability distribution function is a continuous function (a function with no ...
Dichotomization is the special case of discretization in which the number of discrete classes is 2, which can approximate a continuous variable as a binary variable (creating a dichotomy for modeling purposes, as in binary classification). Discretization is also related to discrete mathematics, and is an important component of granular computing.