Nominal data is best described as:

• A. Categorical data that can be ordered
• B. Categorical data that cannot be ordered
• C. Numerical data with a true zero
• D. Data that measures time intervals

Answer: (B)

Nominal data are categories that function as labels for observations, with no inherent order among them. Because there is no natural ranking or numerical relationship between the categories, they’re described as categorical data that cannot be ordered. You can count how many observations fall into each category, but you can’t say one category is greater or has more value than another, nor can you meaningfully compute averages or differences between categories. This is why nominal data fit best as “categorical data that cannot be ordered.”

For contrast, if the data were able to be ordered, that would describe ordinal data; if the data were numerical with a true zero, that describes ratio-type numerical data; and time intervals are numeric measurements rather than labels.