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Chapter 2
Data Structures: Classifying the Various Types of Data Sets

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Data Structure Elements

Measurements of items
e.g., Yearly sales volume for your 23 salespeople e.g., Cost and number produced, daily, for the past month

Data Set:

Elementary Units:
The items being measured
e.g., Salespeople, Days, Companies, Catalogs,

A Variable:
The type of measurement being done
e.g., Sales volume, Cost, Productivity, Number of defects,

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How Many Variables?

e.g., Sales for the top 30 computer companies. Can do: Typical summary, diversity, special features

Univariate data set: One variable measured for each elementary unit

Bivariate data set: Two variables

e.g., Sales and # Employees for top 30 computer firms Can also do: relationship, prediction

Multivariate data set: Three or more variables

e.g., Sales, # Employees, Inventories, Profits, Can also do: predict one from all other variables
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Numbers or Categories?
e.g., Sales, # Employees Can add, rank, count

Quantitative Variable: Meaningful numbers

Qualitative Variable: Categories

Ordinal Variable: Categories with meaningful ordering
e.g., Bond rating (AA, A, B, ), Diamonds (VSI, SI, )

Can rank, count Nominal Variable: categories without meaningful ordering e.g., State, Type of business, Field of study Can count
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Time-Series or Cross-Sectional?
Elementary units might be days or quarters or years e.g., Daily Dow-Jones stock market average close for the past 90 days e.g., Your firms quarterly sales over the past 5 years

Time-Series Data: Data values recorded in meaningful sequence

Cross-Sectional Data: No meaningful sequence

e.g., Sales of 30 companies e.g., Productivity of each sales division Easier than time series!
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Example
Firm IBM Exxon GE AT&T Sales 66,346 59,023 40,482 34,357 Industry Group Office Equipment Fuel Conglomerates Telecommunications S&P Rating A AA+ A-

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Example (continued) Multivariate Data (3 variables)

Firm IBM Exxon GE AT&T Sales 66,346 59,023 40,482 34,357
Quantitative variable

Industry Group Office Equipment Fuel Conglomerates Telecommunications

Nominal Qualitative variable

S&P Rating A AA+ AOrdinal Qualitative variable

Elementary units

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Example
Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Small Business Administration Budget ($ Millions) 677 873 333 -77 57 287

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Example
Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Small Business Administration Budget ($ Millions) 677 873 333 -77 57 287 Quantitative data

Elementary unit defined by year

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Stock Market Time Series

1,600 1,400 S&P stock market index 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 Year 1970 1980 1990 2000

S&P Stock Index, monthly since 1925

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Sources of Data
When you control the design and data collection Production data from your factory Your firms marketing studies

Primary Data

Secondary Data
When you use data previously collected by others for their own purposes Government data: economics and demographics Media reports TV, newspapers, Internet Companies that specialize in gathering data
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