Which of the following is an ordinal categorical data example?

• A. Red, Green, Blue
• B. Grades A, B, C
• C. Temperature ranges: cold, warm
• D. Weight in kg

Answer: (B)

Ordinal categorical data are labels that have a natural order, so you can say one category is higher or lower than another, but you don’t assign exact numeric distances between them. Grades A, B, C fit this perfectly: there is a clear ranking from A (higher) to B (middle) to C (lower), and they are categories rather than numbers.

Red, Green, Blue are nominal categories with no inherent order, so they don’t show the ordering that defines ordinal data. Weight in kilograms is a numeric measurement, not a category, so it’s quantitative data rather than categorical. Temperature ranges like cold and warm imply an order, but with only two levels it’s not as strong an illustration of an ordered, multi-level ordinal scale as Grades are.