Is Gender a qualitative or quantitative

value... (if not the title would just have been terribly grammatically wrong, as if my spelling was any better)

so at our first biometric tutorial we had to figure out which statements were nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio scales. then we had to figure if statements were qualitative or quantitative

there was one which went like this

"Gender of student* in a conference"
Answer: ???

so there's a big difference on
"How many Genders of students in a conference?"

and

"How many boy and girl students in a conference"

the first would be qualitative if you ask me,
the second two quantitative,

why so?
lets take an example using colored pens. blue and red.
there are 100 blue pens and 30 red pens.

if i ask:
"Color of pens in a box"
the answer would be: blue and red. qualitative (cause, colors are the best example of quality, even if they can now be counted quantitatively through scales and numerals of hue, gamma and contrast)

"Number of colors of pens in the box"
answer: 2 colors. blue and red. quantitative

"Number of blue and red pens in the box"
answer: 100 blue pens and 30 red pens.

so.. see the similarity?
if i were to ask.
gender of students, you cant answer me with a numerical value. its just gonna be male or female. not even in percentage. if i ask how many genders, then you can add in the word "two". but no more explanation than that. only if i asked how many male and female students are there, then it would be a certified genuine quantitative question/statement,

its like. menilai dan mengira.
to define a student if he was a boy or girl, one has to discern. which is a qualitative choice.
you cannot "count" a student if he is a boy or girl. cause.. there ain't such thing as 60% boy and 40% girl.

its like, jim and alee are saying that this statement is qualitative,
i) gender of students saying it is qualitative
ii) what is the gender saying this statement is qualitative
iii) how many students in the gender (male) are saying this statement is qualitative.

if it was nominal like,
1=male
2=female

1 + 2 = 3.
there is no three.
although nominal can be a quantitative scale. yet....
you cannot calculate gender

same goes with brands.
"brands of hand phones bought by consumers"
it is a qualitative statement if you ask me.
yes some might say you can count how many samsung phones are bought by people, how many sony phones, and how many nokia phones. but see the question is not

"how many hand phones in certain brands bought by consumers"
nor
"hand phone brand's bought by consumers"

a consumer cannot "buy" the brand.
he buys a phone made by the brand.

you dont buy 60%.. err.. 0.00001% of samsung everytime your purchase a phone.

you cant calculate the brand of phones bought
you only can calculate the number of phones of certain brands bought.

If I buy one sumsung phone. And Another guy buys one more sumsung phone.

There are two sumsung phones. Yes they can be counted.

But we didn't buy the brands. We both have cumulatively sumsung phones.

There is still only one brand, sumsung. It is an entity that cannot be valued numerically.

well the one we won was
"type of car driven by students in ums"
answer: qualitative
why? because there is no proper definition for the amount of cars out there. yes one can try to classify them into SUVs, 4X4, sedan, racers, hatchbacks, muscle, etc.. but the sheer amount of variety there is just makes it.. un-quantifiable. hence, why we do not classify cars into Toyota's, Honda's or Mercs.

on a side note, remember how we used to say "more water" as in, "there is more water in this bucket than the other" because, theoretically, without a standard scale we wouldn't be able to know what liters or paints are.. it would just be "alot of water" and "a little water". something like "big" and "small" .. who ever gave the right to anyone to define what is "big" and "how big must something be to be considered big" (something like the "how much good is good enough)

but because the general population agrees that 1 cubic meter or water equals to 1 liter. so thus... the fluid has become, quantifiable by weighing, err.. wait no.. but.. measuring in a cylinder.

so it should be "how many more liters of water is there in this bucket than the other"
like.. how many people are in a room. how much more people are there in this room than the next.

worse, how much hues is this chili red differing from that magenta. or is it supposed to be 'many'. i'm confused.

much= uncountable
many= countable

heck. everything can and should be quantifiable.
even thoughts. science wants to do that. science wants to put a value and number to everything around us. even.. thoughts.

back then in the past, our emotions, feelings, imaginations were qualitative.
but now which academicians doing research and surveys into everything they can lay their hands on.. statistics appear everywhere.

they say numbers dont lie. they are facts that speak the truth.
but ... they can be manipulated. and they can be honestly miscalculated.

so, what say you?
* i take it as an honest mistake, it should be, and we all know. it is a typo for "students"