latex two left braces for 4 lines and one right brace for 3 lines

Question

My minimal demo is given as follows

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
\begin{document}
$$
\begin{aligned}
\text{quantitative} &= 
\left{
\begin{gathered}
\text{continuous}\
\text{discret} 
\end{gathered}
\right.
\
\text{qualitative} &= 
\left{
\begin{gathered}
\text{nominal}\
\text{ordinal}
\end{gathered}
\right.
\end{aligned}
$$
\end{document}

I want to a right barce categorical for three lines over discret,nominal and ordinal, like

How can I get there via basic latex commands or particular packages?

Off-topic: Don't use $$…$$ with LaTeX, i. e., not with amsmath! — cabohah, Mar 29 '23 at 07:33
Tks for reminding! @cabohah I use $$...$$ here just for markdown and pandoc.exe supporting reason. In pure latex it is indeed recommended to use \[...\]. — John Stone, Mar 31 '23 at 02:08

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '23 at 08:01

You could use a NiceArray (provided by the nicematrix package) which offers much more flexibility:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{nicematrix}
\begin{document}
[
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.2}
\begin{NiceArray}{rcl}
    \Block{2-1}{\text{quantitative} =}
        & \text{continuous} & \
        & \text{discret}    & \Block{3-1}{= \text{categorical}} \
    \Block{2-1}{\text{qualitative} =} 
        & \text{nominal}    & \
        & \text{ordinal}    & \
    \CodeAfter
        \SubMatrix.{1-1}{2-1}{
        \SubMatrix.{3-1}{4-1}{
        \SubMatrix}{2-3}{4-3}.
\end{NiceArray}
]
\end{document}

Very impressive! It is indeed flexible! – John Stone Mar 31 '23 at 02:09 — John Stone, Mar 31 '23 at 02:09

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 29 '23 at 08:00

I'm not sure this is an effective way to present ideas. Anyway, with a bit of visual formatting for a one-shot case

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
[
\hbox{\valign{\vfil#\cr
  \hbox{$\begin{aligned}
  \text{quantitative} &=
  \left{\begin{aligned}&\text{continuous} \ &\text{discrete}\end{aligned}\right.
  \
  \text{qualitative} &=
  \left{\begin{aligned}&\text{nominal} \ &\text{ordinal}\end{aligned}\right.
  \end{aligned}$}
\cr
  \hbox{%
    \hspace{-1em}%
    $\left.\vphantom{\begin{matrix} 0 \ 0 \ 0 \ 0 \end{matrix}}\right}\text{categorical}$%
  }
\cr
}}
]
\end{document}

latex two left braces for 4 lines and one right brace for 3 lines

2 Answers2