A data set contains information on a number of cases. Cases may be customers, companies, subjects in a study, units in an experiment, or other objects.
For each case, the data give values for one or more variables. A variable describes some characteristic of a case, such as a person’s height, gender, or salary. Variables can have different values for different cases.
A label is a special variable used to identify cases in a data set.
Some variables are categorical and others are quantitative. A categorical variable places each individual into a category, such as male or female. A quantitative variable has numerical values that measure some characteristic of each case, such as height in centimeters or annual salary in dollars.
The key characteristics of a data set answer the questions Who?, What?, and Why?
A rate is sometimes a more meaningful measure than a count.