To monitor campus security,the campus police office is taking a survey of the number of students in a parking lot each 30 minutes of a 24-hour period with the goal of determining when patrols of the lot would serve the most students.If X is the number of students in the lot each period,then X is an example of
A)a categorical variable.
B)a discrete variable.
C)a continuous variable.
D)a statistic.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

X is a count of the number of students in the parking lot, which is a discrete variable. It cannot be a categorical variable because it is not nominal in nature (i.e. it does not fall into categories with no inherent order or magnitude). It cannot be a continuous variable because it is not measured on a continuous scale (i.e. it cannot take on any value within a range). Finally, X is not a statistic, which is a value that summarizes data from a sample population, while X is simply a variable used to represent the data being collected.

To Monitor Campus Security,the Campus Police Office Is Taking a Survey