Which statement matches ordinal data?

• A. Temperature in Celsius
• B. Income level: low, middle, high
• C. Hair colour
• D. Number of rooms in a house

Answer: (B)

The key idea is distinguishing data types by order and whether differences between values are meaningful. Ordinal data use categories that have a natural order, but the gaps between categories aren’t assumed to be equal.

Income level (low, middle, high) fits this perfectly: there’s a clear ranking from low to high, but we can’t assume equal intervals between the levels or quantify the exact difference between them. That makes it ordinal data.

Temperature in Celsius is numeric with meaningful intervals, and though you can order temperatures, the scale is interval data because equal differences matter and it doesn’t have a true zero.

Hair colour is nominal data—categories with no inherent order.

Number of rooms is ratio data—numerical with a true zero and meaningful ratios.

So income level is the example that best matches ordinal data.