Question

Determine whether the following are quantitative or qualitative.

Determine the scale of measurement of the following (Ratio, Ordinal, Nominal, Interval)

Company	Sales ($ millions)	Sales rank	Profits ($ millions)	Profit rank	Industry
General Motors	161,315	1	2,956	30	Automotive
Ford Motor	144,416	2	22,071	2	Automotive
Wal-Mart Stores	139,208	3	4,430	14	Retailing
Exxon	100,697	4	6,370	5	Oil
General Electric	100,469	5	9,269	3	Energy
IBM	81,667	6	6,328	6	Computers
Citigroup	76,431	7	5,807	8	Banking
Philip Morris	57,813	8	5,372	9	Tobacco
Boeing	56,154	9	1,120	82	Airplanes
AT&T	53,588	10	6,398	4	Telecommunications

  

Answer 1

(a) Sales and Profit are quantitative data since they can be expressed in terms of numerical value. Sales rank, Profit rank and Industry are qualitative data since they cannot be quantified.

(b) Sales and Profit are Ratio scale since they are expressed in terms of numbers, can accommodate the zero value and mean, median and variance can be numerically computed. Sales rank and profit rank are in Nominal scale since we can only know the ranks but distance between two ranks may be different. Industry is measured in Ordinal scale since neither ranking is possible nor is the information quantifiable.