hi genericname

In all the maths courses I've come across data sets have only been divided into discrete and continuous.

There's a simple definition / example at

http://www.mathwords.com/d/discrete.htm

So how has 'finite' defined in this context.

Bob

Oh.

That's two of us who don't know then.

a) X is the number of customers who walk into a shop between noon and 1PM on some particular day.
b) X is the amount of orange juice in a randomly chosen 8-ounce carton of juice.
c) X is the amount of times you play the lottery until you win? We'll assume that once you win you stop playing.
d) X is the number of women in a randomly chosen sample of 500 New York City residents.

I'd say (b) is definitely continuous.

The others are all positive integers so that would make them discrete.  I cannot see any speicial quality that would make some 'finite'.  They are all countable but all discrete data has to be that or you don't 'know' it.

Sorry I cannot be more help. 

What is the course?

Bob

I've had a search on-line and can only find two categorisations of data: discrete and continuous.

See:

http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/defi … tinuous-31

However the Wiki article does allow that discrete distributions may be finite or infinite (by which they mean no upper limit but can be counted)

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution

About one third of the way down the article look for the section:   "Discrete probability Distribution"

So here's my best shot at the answers:

a) X is the number of customers who walk into a shop between noon and 1PM on some particular day.  discrete and unbounded"
b) X is the amount of orange juice in a randomly chosen 8-ounce carton of juice.  continuous
c) X is the amount of times you play the lottery until you win? We'll assume that once you win you stop playing. discrete and unbounded
d) X is the number of women in a randomly chosen sample of 500 New York City residents. discrete and finite

Bob