Types of Data

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Saint Leo’s core value of “Excellence” states as follows, “All of us, individually and collectively, work hard to ensure that our students develop the character, learn the skills, and assimilate the knowledge essential to become morally responsible leaders” (Florida Catholic University). Using data effectively and efficiently is the moral responsibility of Saint Leo Alumni for our students and community. In order to be effective and efficient one must be able to recognize different types of data and be able to determine the need and meaning behind the numbers. Before interpreting different types of data, remember that data refers to a group of information that one can analyze. Data can range from a gender ratio to scores of an individualized assessment.
In the education field, one will encounter several forms of data throughout the day. The data that we encounter can be broken into three distinct groups. Information that cannot be sequenced is part of the nominal category of data. This information has no “high” or “low” value. There is not a logical sequence for the data to be categorized. An interesting piece of nominal data that I discovered was male to female ratio. I work for a small facility of only 10 employees and was interested to note that there were 4 females and 6 males. Looking at this data is very important because there is a group of people that can utilize this information in a great capacity than others. This group of people is often referred to as the audience. In the gender example the audience for this information would be potential employees and hiring mangers. These would be two key audience members because they would be able to utilize this information most when making decision. Another way t...

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...n, one can understand the practicality and importance of effectively using and deducing data. It is important to understand and interpret different type s of nominal, ordinal, and interval data. Being able to assess the different types of data give one a clear idea of what information is presented and, more importantly, how to competently utilize it. Furthermore, knowing whether the data presented is discrete or continuous will help one to set and meet expectations. In all, having data is imperative however knowing how to utilize the data effectively is invaluable

Works Cited

Data Driven Decisions. (2013, June 3). . Retrieved May 6, 2014, from http://saintleo.learningstudio.com/re/DotNextLaunch.asp?courseid...
Florida Catholic University. (n.d.). Saint Leo University. Retrieved May 10, 2014, from http://www.saintleo.edu/about/florida-catholic-university.aspx

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