What Is Classification And What Are Its Types?

Classification is a process by which things are arranged in groups or classes according to some resemblance in the units of each group or class.Classification of statistical data is done on the basis of characteristic possessed by the individual items. An individual item may have one of the two types of characteristic, descriptive or numerical. Descriptive characteristic are those which only describe the individual and give rise to no quantitative measurement of the individual. For example poor, blind, health etc, are descriptive characteristic since they help to differentiate among the individuals but give rise to no numerical measurement.

Characteristic like height, weight, income, number of leaves on a certain tree is called numerical as they are capable of direct quantitative measurement. Thus according to the nature of characteristic possessed, by the items of data, there are two main types of classification. Classification according to one characteristic of variable is called one-way classification.Characteristic of classification according to two characteristics of variables is called two way classifications.