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In statistics, dichotomous data may only exist at first two levels of measurement, namely at the nominal level of measurement (such as "British" vs "American" when measuring nationality) and at the ordinal level of measurement (such as "tall" vs "short", when measuring height). A variable measured dichotomously is called a dummy variable.
The values are ordered in a logical way and must be defined for each variable. Domains can be bigger or smaller. The smallest possible domains have those variables that can only have two values, also called binary (or dichotomous) variables. Bigger domains have non-dichotomous variables and the ones with a higher level of measurement.
For example, if the value A is considered "success" (and thus B is considered "failure"), the data set A, A, B would be represented as 1, 1, 0. When this is grouped, the values are added, while the number of trial is generally tracked implicitly. For example, A, A, B would be grouped as 1 + 1 + 0 = 2 successes (out of = trials).
A categorical variable that can take on exactly two values is termed a binary variable or a dichotomous variable; an important special case is the Bernoulli variable. Categorical variables with more than two possible values are called polytomous variables ; categorical variables are often assumed to be polytomous unless otherwise specified.
The point biserial correlation coefficient (r pb) is a correlation coefficient used when one variable (e.g. Y) is dichotomous; Y can either be "naturally" dichotomous, like whether a coin lands heads or tails, or an artificially dichotomized variable. In most situations it is not advisable to dichotomize variables artificially. [1]
Contrary to a widespread belief, a Guttman scale is not limited to dichotomous variables and does not necessarily determine an order among the variables. But if variables are all dichotomous, the variables are indeed ordered by their sensitivity in recording the assessed attribute, as illustrated by Example 1.
A variable of this type is called a dummy variable. If the dependent variable is a dummy variable, then logistic regression or probit regression is commonly employed. In the case of regression analysis, a dummy variable can be used to represent subgroups of the sample in a study (e.g. the value 0 corresponding to a constituent of the control ...
In statistics, the phi coefficient (or mean square contingency coefficient and denoted by φ or r φ) is a measure of association for two binary variables.. In machine learning, it is known as the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) and used as a measure of the quality of binary (two-class) classifications, introduced by biochemist Brian W. Matthews in 1975.