Force a Numeric Attribute to Be Treated Categorically

How To... > Work with Collections > Force a Numeric Attribute to Be Treated Categorically

Sometimes an attribute’s values are numeric but you want to treat each distinct numeric value as a category, for example, to make a bar chart of die tosses.

•Hold down Shift as you drop the attribute onto the Fathom object (graph, summary table, or statistical object). You can start the drag normally and press Shift just before the drop.

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If you want the attribute to always be treated as categorical, generate a category set from it (see Attributes with Category Sets).

1.	In the Cases panel of the collection inspector, click Show Details.

2.	Select the attribute and choose Generate From Values from the Set pop-up menu.

Fathom generates a category set from the attribute’s values. Even if all values are numeric, if you apply a category set to an attribute, it will always be treated as categorical when dropped on Fathom objects.

In this example, the class was divided into groups to conduct an experiment; to get a dot plot of distance split by group (rather than a scatter plot), group needs to be interpreted as categorical.