Categorical variable

In statistics, a categorical variable is a variable that can take on one of a limited, and usually fixed, number of possible values, thus assigning each individual to a particular group or "category." In computer science and some branches of mathematics, categorical variables are referred to as enumerations or enumerated types. Commonly (though not in this article), each of the possible values of a categorical variable is referred to as a level. The probability distribution associated with a random categorical variable is called a categorical distribution.