# What is the difference between discrete and continuous data?

I have two datasets: one consists of expected values and the second includes observed values. I want to test the difference between these two datasets.

This is dataset A

 Variable Value

1          0,9
2          1,1
3          292,7
4          71,5
5          47,2
6          62,1
7          22,3
8          12,4
9          22,8
..         ..
60         0,1


This is dataset B

Variable Value

1          0,1
2          2,5
3          274,8
4          71,3
5          46,3
6          62,5
7          22,5
8          12,5
9          22,2
..         ..
60         1,5


What I would like to know is: are these datasets discrete or continuous? The first column can only take integers, while the second column can take any continuous value.

• Are you using commas as decimal points? In many data formats, this would be ambiguous, because of Comma-Separated Value files. – Adrian Keister Jun 9 '20 at 14:50
• decimal points, but I rounded on 1 decimal. – Jonathan Jun 9 '20 at 14:53

What you called "Variable" is a discrete variable. Nonetheless, checking that the values are sequential, perhaps is just a row identifier (each row has a value, like the sheets in excel).

Then, what you call "value" might be the response variable, which is continuous.

In brief, if "variable" is a row identifier, your dataset contains continuous data. Otherwise, you have two variables, one discrete and another continuous.

Then, if you want to test the difference between dataset A values and dataset B values you can apply an error metric calculus (to see how far are your estimations from the observed values). Or, you can apply a paired t-test http://www.sthda.com/english/wiki/paired-samples-t-test-in-r, if the hypothesis are fullfilled (to see if they're significantly different).