Final answer:
Option b) correctly identifies two categorical variables, Mayor's political affiliation and City name, and two quantitative variables, Average temperature and Time zone, to measure a city's characteristics.
Step-by-step explanation:
To measure a city's characteristics, it is important to distinguish between different types of data. Categorical variables are those that place items into categories and cannot be quantified by arithmetic operations. Quantitative variables can be measured and expressed numerically and are subject to mathematical operations.
Correct identification of these variables for the given options would be:
b) Categorical: Mayor's political affiliation, City name; Quantitative: Average temperature, Time zone.
Mayor's political affiliation is a categorical variable because it describes a characteristic that can be placed into categories such as Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Similarly, City name is categorical as it categorizes a city and cannot be measured. On the other hand, Average temperature is a quantitative variable since it can be measured in degrees, and while Time zone involves labels, it also has a mathematical component in terms of hours offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), making it quantitative.
As per the concepts and guidelines provided, the correct option that identifies two categorical variables and two quantitative variables is option b).