Five stars or "it was fine"?

After the school trip, the teacher asks you two questions.

Question 1: give the trip a score from 1 to 5. Question 2: tell us what you thought, in your own words.

The first answer is a number. The second is a sentence. A computer treats them very differently. Why?

Key words

Word	What it means	Example
Quantitative data	Data that is a number. You can count it or measure it.	5 stars, 12 students, 1.6 metres
Qualitative data	Data that describes. It is words, opinions, pictures or sounds.	"The trip was fun."
Structured data	Data in a fixed shape, such as rows and columns, so a computer finds things fast.	A table of students
Unstructured data	Data with no fixed shape. A computer must work hard to understand it.	An email, a photo, a voice message
Field	One column in a table. It holds one kind of fact.	The stars column
Record	One row in a table. It holds all the facts about one thing.	All the facts about Aisha
Category	A group that things belong to.	Number or words

The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.

Quantitative: you can count it

Quantitative data is a number. You count it or measure it. How many? How much? How long?

Age, price, score, number of goals. Because it is a number, you can add it up and put it in order. You can also find the average (add all the numbers, then share the total equally). A computer is very good at this.

Qualitative: you describe it

Qualitative data describes something. It tells you what it is like and why.

A comment, an opinion, a photo, a video. It has a lot of meaning, but you cannot add two comments together. A computer finds this much harder.

Try it: add and compare

Code: python

stars = [5, 2, 4, 3, 5, 1]
comments = ["The museum was very good", "We waited for the coach", "Good day"]

# max finds the biggest number. min finds the smallest.
print("Biggest score:", max(stars))
print("Smallest score:", min(stars))
print("Joined comments:", comments[0] + comments[1])

# Numbers give you a useful answer.
# Joined comments are just two sentences stuck together.

Quantitative and qualitative side by side

	Quantitative	Qualitative
What it is	A number	A description
Question it answers	How many? How much?	What is it like? Why?
Example	Score of 4 out of 5	"The guide was funny."
Can you add it up?	Yes	No
Used to	Measure, compare and calculate	Understand opinions and reasons
Shape in a computer	Structured	Unstructured

The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.