Professional Documents
Culture Documents
James H. Steiger
Measurement
Measurement is the process of assigning
numbers to quantities. The process is so
familiar that perhaps we often overlook its
fundamental characteristics.
Properties of a Quantity
Quantities that we can measure have a
number of properties. For example, a
quantity can be discrete or continuous.
Discrete Quantities
A discrete quantity can be placed in 1-1
correspondence with integers. For example,
number of children given birth to, number
of atoms in a bar of soap, number of cars in
your driveway.
Continuous Quantities
Quantities that are continuous can take on
(effectively) infinitely many values over
their range. An example is height or weight.
Height is frequently reported only to the
nearest whole inch. So when a person is
reported as being 71 inches tall, that person
could, for example, have a height of
71.114512312. inches.
Dangers to Avoid
Attaching unwarranted significance to aspects of
the numbers that do not convey meaningful
information
Failing to simply data when would easily do so
Manipulating our data in ways that destroy
information
Performing meaningless statistical operations on
the data
Levels of Measurement
Attributes have properties that are similar to
numbers.
When we assign numbers to attributes, we
can do so poorly, in which case the
properties of the numbers to not correspond
to the properties of the attributes.
In such a case, we achieve only a low level
of measurement
Levels of Measurement
On the other hand, if the properties of our
assigned numbers correspond properly to
those of the assigned attributes, we achieve
a high level of measurement.
A simple example should help clarify the
above.
A Simple Example
Six athletes try out for a sprinters position
on a local track team.
They all run a 100 meter dash, and are
timed by several coaches each using a
different stopwatch.
True
Time
Nominal
10
23
11
12
13
20
20
19
13
20
26
Nominal
Ordinal
10
23
11
11
12
14
13
20
15
20
19
18
13
20
15
26
Athlete
Nominal
Ordinal
Ordinal
10
23
11
11
12
14
13
20
15
20
19
18
13
20
15
26
Athlete
Nominal
Ordinal
Ordinal
Interval
10
23
11
21
11
12
14
23
13
20
15
27
20
19
18
41
13
20
15
27
26
Athlete
Nominal
Ordinal
Ordinal
Interval
Ratio
10
23
11
21
20
11
12
14
23
22
13
20
15
27
26
20
19
18
41
40
13
20
15
27
26
26
Athlete
Permissible Transforms
Some of the information in numbers at a
particular level of measurement is valuable,
but, as we have seen, some is arbitrary or
superfluous.
What can we do to a list of numbers without
destroying valuable information?
Permissible Transforms
Each level of measurement has a
permissible transform.
These transforms are hierarchical. If you
perform a transform that is only permissible
at a lower level, you will automatically drop
the level of measurement to that lower
level.
Y f (X )
Y aX b, a 0
Y aX , a 0