How to distinguish numerical categorical (Ex: White = 1, Latino = 2 etc) from numerical continuous or discrete variables on a dataset? I am currently working on a project that involves a data processing pipeline, and in it I might come across all sorts of data. I would like to know if there are any references on an automatic way to detect if a numerical column is actually a category (e.g. store ids, ZIP codes, etc...) and to not mistake it for a continuous variable.
Is there any way in which we could look at the numbers on a particular column and solely based on the number tell if it's categorical or numerical? I myself have already read a couple of other posts regarding this problem here but most of the answers either don't have any references to scientific studies or simply say it's impossible.

I found this helpful
A key distinction between ordinal categorical variables and discrete quantitative variables is that there is a uniform degree of difference within discrete quantitative variables.
It’s from resource
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/stats-variable-types/modules/stats-variable-types/cheatsheet
Hope it helps.
