Nominal, or categorical, data, unlike ranked, are impossible to order or align. They are even farther away from numbers. For example, if we assign numerical values to males and females (say, “1” and “...Nominal, or categorical, data, unlike ranked, are impossible to order or align. They are even farther away from numbers. For example, if we assign numerical values to males and females (say, “1” and “2”), it would not imply that one sex is somehow “larger” then the other. An intermediate value (like “1.5”) is also hard to imagine. Consequently, nominal indices may be labeled with any letters, words or special characters—it does not matter.
