The spatiotemporal coordinates described in sections 4.1-4.4 are continuous variables, and other geophysical quantities may likewise serve as continuous coordinate variables, for instance density, temperature or radiation wavelength. By contrast, for some purposes there is a need for an axis of a data variable which indicates either an ordered list or an unordered collection, and does not correspond to any continuous coordinate variable. Consequently such an axis may be called “discrete”. A discrete axis has a dimension but might not have a coordinate variable. Instead, there might be one or more auxiliary coordinate variables with this dimension (see preamble to section 5). Following sections define various applications of discrete axes, for instance section 6.1.1 “Geographical regions”, section 7.3.3 “Statistics applying to portions of cells”, section 9.3 “Representation of collections of features in data variables”.