Question

Which of the following examples best represents the use of an interval scale? measuring the number of cookie boxes sold by scouts on the west coast of a town versus those sold on the east coast of the town naming the different car brands seen in a school's parking lot assessing students' ratings of their professors' performance on a five-point scale ranging from poor to excellent ranking the participants of a race based on their performance

Answer 1

students' ratings of their professors' performance on a five-point scale ranging from poor to excellent

Explanation:

There are four type of scales in mathematics. They include:

1. Nominal scale : they do not measure quantity. they are used to classify a population into two or more scales that are exhaustive and mutually exclusive. e.g. classifying a population based on gender, naming the different car brands seen in a school's parking lot

2. Ordinal scale : this scale measures ranks a population from best to worst or from least to most. e.g. ranking the participants of a race based on their performance

3. Interval scale : this scale has the property of order and equal intervals. Zero is not meaningful.

Interval scale is used when the difference between the numbers are meaningful. e.g. students' ratings of their professors' performance on a five-point scale ranging from poor to excellent Here a child who is scored 1, did very poorly and a child scored 5, performed excellently well.

4. Ratio scale : this scale has the property of order, a meaningful zero and equal intervals.