What is "dummy variable"

n. (context statistics English) A binary variable, which takes a value of 0 or 1 to indicate which category an individual falls into.

In statistics and econometrics, particularly in regression analysis, a dummy variable (also known as an indicator variable, design variable, Boolean indicator, categorical variable, binary variable, or qualitative variable) is one that takes the value 0 or 1 to indicate the absence or presence of some categorical effect that may be expected to shift the outcome. Dummy variables are used as devices to sort data into mutually exclusive categories (such as smoker/non-smoker, etc.). For example, in econometric time series analysis, dummy variables may be used to indicate the occurrence of wars or major strikes. A dummy variable can thus be thought of as a truth value represented as a numerical value 0 or 1 (as is sometimes done in computer programming).

Dummy variables are "proxy" variables or numeric stand-ins for qualitative facts in a regression model. In regression analysis, the dependent variables may be influenced not only by quantitative variables (income, output, prices, etc.), but also by qualitative variables (gender, religion, geographic region, etc.). A dummy independent variable (also called a dummy explanatory variable) which for some observation has a value of 0 will cause that variable's coefficient to have no role in influencing the dependent variable, while when the dummy takes on a value 1 its coefficient acts to alter the intercept. For example, suppose Gender is one of the qualitative variables relevant to a regression. Then, female and male would be the categories included under the Gender variable. If female is arbitrarily assigned the value of 1, then male would get the value 0. Then the intercept (the value of the dependent variable if all other explanatory variables hypothetically took on the value zero) would be the constant term for males but would be the constant term plus the coefficient of the gender dummy in the case of females.

Dummy variables are used frequently in time series analysis with regime switching, seasonal analysis and qualitative data applications. Dummy variables are involved in studies for economic forecasting, bio-medical studies, credit scoring, response modelling, etc. Dummy variables may be incorporated in traditional regression methods or newly developed modeling paradigms.

The term dummy variable can refer to either of the following:

• Bound variable – in mathematics and computer science, a placeholder variable;
• Dummy variable (statistics) – an indicator variable.