The Fractionator Principle. The fractionator principle is one of the important concepts used in stereology. The importance of this principle cannot be overlooked. It appears in many different places. Although it looks different depending on how it is used, the principle is the same.
In mathematics, a variable whose value is determined by the value of an independent variable. For example, in the formula for the area of a circle, A = Ïr2, A is the dependent variable, as its value depends on the value of the radius (r). Compare independent variable.
back at least to the 1950s (see Blalock 1979 section 2.2 and the references mentioned there). variable is a classification for which there is no ordering (although sometimes there is a partial ordering): the values are just names and are not to be interpreted quantitatively even if they are numbers. The values of an ordinal variable can be put into a unique order, but the distance between values cannot be quantified. For an interval variable, the distance between values can be quantified but the zero is