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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]
Discrete time is often employed when empirical measurements are involved, because normally it is only possible to measure variables sequentially. For example, while economic activity actually occurs continuously, there being no moment when the economy is totally in a pause, it is only possible to measure economic activity discretely.
Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous functions). Objects studied in discrete mathematics include integers, graphs, and statements in logic.
Benford's law, which describes the frequency of the first digit of many naturally occurring data. The ideal and robust soliton distributions. Zipf's law or the Zipf distribution. A discrete power-law distribution, the most famous example of which is the description of the frequency of words in the English language.
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.
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]
A numerical univariate data is discrete if the set of all possible values is finite or countably infinite. Discrete univariate data are usually associated with counting (such as the number of books read by a person). A numerical univariate data is continuous if the set of all possible values is an interval of numbers.
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.