I wanted to know how good of a spouse I’d make so I married 10 times and took an average!
Dennis Pearl & Larry Lesser
I wanted to know how good of a spouse I’d make so I married 10 times and took an average!
Dennis Pearl & Larry Lesser
by Jules Nyquist
when zero
is a temperature
it is an interval scale
that dips below an imaginary
line to go negative, as in a thermometer
in a pandemic used as permission to measure
our temperature, but how do we measure
something that falls below zero
like the weight of a bird—our thermometer
won’t register an invisible temperature
and we will disappear like the imaginary
checkbook balance of youth, on a scale
of probability, the chances of converting the Fahrenheit scale
to Centigrade was remote, the U.S. still measured
in Fahrenheit behind the rest of the imaginary
world where a bank balance waits to zero-
out and a raven pulls shiny coins from the sky in a temperature-
controlled out-of-the ether mainframe thermometer
six thousand feet above sea level, a thermometer
measures the speed on a speedometer scale
when the motorcycle driver hurls over a temperature-
reduced mountain ridge to an almost measurable
crash that soars into a stock-market zero-
point of ratio scaling, a lie on an imaginary
boundary where the motorcycle driver imagines
they never hit the car and the thermometer
never registered above human normal and zero
meant nothing, it was only an innocent bathroom scale
that we blamed added ten immeasurable
pandemic pounds to our weight and the temperature
of Earth rose only in the height of trees,
a temperature that didn’t take into account the imaginary
altitude sickness that turned out to be very measurable
and tripled the effect of the beer stored in a thermal
cooler, found by the side of the scaled
curve of that mountain road where zero
was just a measurement of temperature
and the imaginary paper bank statement never showed zero
due to there was nothing to scale on the erratic thermometer.
Lyrics © 2015 by Larry Lesser, music by Larry Lesser and Dominic Dousa
Nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio are levels of measurement.
Let's show that progression with examples that we present.
With a variable that's nominal, values are just like names.
So ordering or averaging religions would really be a shame!
A variable that's ordinal sorts values like a chain,
But don't assume with Likert scales each jump would mean the same!
With a variable that's interval, differences are sound,
But Fahrenheit ratios would only just confound.
With a variable that's ratio, zero means there's none.
And when it comes to incomes, two's twice as much as one!
Examples help us learn what measurement levels are!
An acronym recalls them:
It's the French word NOIR!
If it is not possible to state unequivocally 'how much is enough,' it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on an average, is too little.
Mollie Orshansky (1915 – 2006)
Q: Who ranks professions by prestige?
A: Status-ticians!
Larry Lesser
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Werner Heisenberg (1901 - 1976)
Failing the possibility of measuring that which you desire, the lust for measurement may, for example, merely result in your measuring something else - and perhaps forgetting the difference - or in your ignoring some things because they cannot be measured.
George Udny Yule (1871 - 1951)
by Larry Lesser
Suppose 50 people are randomly chosen
And asked "Do you fancy this yogurt that's frozen?"
50 is viewed as the size of our sample;
It’s not to be viewed as a variable’s value.
What's one guy's answer? Well, that's not rhetorical;
It is a variable that's categorical.
The way you can view it, the way you can know:
Each person we surveyed says 'yes' or a 'no'.
Of course, you could tally each label's amounts
For a summ'ry statistic from each of the counts.
But that doesn't mean that a variable’s numerical;
Each value's a category whose tallies are clerical.
We know that a variable is very able
To yield useful data all in a nice table,
But we must assert categorically
Variable type is important, you see,
To know just what summ'ries and tools you can use
So bar graphs and histograms won't be confused!
Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.
Bertrand A.W. Russell (1872 - 1970)