numeric variable

Differences Between the Normal and Poisson Distributions

December 23rd, 2016 by

The normal distribution is so ubiquitous in statistics that those of us who use a lot of statistics tend to forget it’s not always so common in actual data.

And since the normal distribution is continuous, many people describe all numerical variables as continuous. I get it: I’m guilty of using those terms interchangeably, too, but they’re not exactly the same.

Numerical variables can be either continuous or discrete.

The difference? Continuous variables can take any number within a range. Discrete variables can only take on specific values. For numeric discrete data, these are often, but don’t have to be, whole numbers*.

Count variables, as the name implies, are frequencies of some event or state. Number of arrests, fish (more…)