Attribute

In data analysis or data mining, an attribute is a characteristic or feature that is measured for each observation (record) and can vary from one observation to another. It might measured in continuous values (e.g. time spent on a web site), or in categorical values (e.g. red, yellow, green). The terms “attribute” and “feature” are used in the machine learning community, “variable” is used in the statistics community. They are synonyms.