[asfand1]

my question is about statistics... I am confused about discrete and continuous variable... my teacher said that stars are continuous variable but why?? I agree they are infinite but they are in whole numbers and will be counted not measured... if we take stars a continuous variable then why don't we take the number of books continuous variable
and my second question about this is that I know 1.01 is after 1 but if we start counting the number of books so its obvious that second book will be counted after 1st one... there can't be a 1.5th book and there is continuty in number of books so why do we say it discrete variable?? please help

[ebaines]

asfand1: If you are talking about counting stars as individual units I agree that they are discrete - like counting books or grains of sand. Perhaps your teacher is assuming that the number of stars is infinite (astronomers disagree about that, so it's a poor example to use). For things that can range to infinity you can think of the jump between any two possibilities as being infinitely small compared to the whole range of possibilities. In that sense you can model stars as being a continuous variable.