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Chapter 3 Entering, Editing, and Managing Data 59
Specifying Data Types and Modeling Types
About Modeling Types
The modeling type of a column applies only to columns whose data types are numeric or character. The
modeling type tells JMP how to treat its values during analyses. Changing the modeling type lets you
look at a variable in different ways in an analysis. The three modeling types are:
3Entering Data
Nominal
Ordinal
Continuous
Continuous Columns only contain numeric data types. Continuous values are treated as
continuous measurement values. JMP uses the numeric values directly in computations.
Ordinal Columns contain either numeric or character data types. JMP analyses treat ordinal
values as discrete categorical values that have an order. If the values are numbers, the order is the
numeric magnitude. If the values are character, the order is the sorting sequence.
Nominal Columns contain either numeric or character data types. All values are treated in JMP
analyses as if they are discrete values with no implicit order.
Possible combinations of data and modeling types are listed in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1 Combinations of Data and Modeling Types
Data Type
Numeric Character
Continuous yes no
Modeling Type Ordinal yes yes
Nominal yes yes
How to Assign Data and Modeling Types
There are three methods to assign data and modeling types or to make sure JMP has automatically
given your data the correct types. The following sections describe these three methods.