g., you like Mountain Dew just a tiny bit more), for another person who listed those soft drinks in the same order, the preference could be great (they would rather drink water than Pepsi if there weren't any Mountain Dew). That being said, ordinal scales only let you interpret gross order -- not the relative positional distances (CSSE 2010). In an interval type of scale, you would maybe be asked to rate your level of satisfaction -- with a 1 being not satisfied at all and a 10 being the most satisfied you could be. This is called an interval scale because it is assumed to have equidistant points between each of the scale elements. This basically means that we can interpret differences in the distance along the scale. When you put this along side of an ordinal scale, you can see that in...

The biggest distinguishing factor about a ratio scale is that is has a clear zero point. The easiest example of a ratio scale is the measurement of length. By looking at temperature, we can contrast interval and ratio scales to get a better idea of how they work. For example, the Centigrade scale has a zero point -- but that zero point is arbitrary. The Fahrenheit scale has its equivalent point at -32 (CSSE 2010).
Reference:

CSSE. (2010). Measurement scales. Retrieved on September 21, 2010, from http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~smarkham/resources/scaling.htm