Indicator

“ But if the purpose is to ascertain how a particular individual, or the average of a group of individuals, compares in particular kinds of capacity with the average or the most highly developed persons of the same status, education, occupation, or age, then the standard by which the subject must be measured must be one derived from the observation and measurement of the mental capacities of as large a number as possible of individuals engaged in all sorts of occupations and of all degrees and grades of educational attainment. ”

“ But having determined just what qualities and abilities it is desired to measure, we must set up a standard of measurement by which to compare the indicated ability of each individual examined, or we shall have nothing as a result of our test but a mass of information, of the significance of which we cannot possibly be aware. ”

“ If, therefore, it be profoundly interesting to contemplate, arrange, and study the multitude of agencies which impel this innumerable caravan of pilgrims toward their destination, it is almost equally instructive to analyze the manifold causes which have contributed to their assembling together. Such particulars, when massed into statistics, become of acknowledged importance to medical and social science. ”

“ For synonyms see Gommeux.
Index (popular) , travailler à l’——, to work at reduced wages.
Indicateur, m. (general) , spy in the pay of the police, “nark.” Generally a street hawker, sometimes a thief.
Il y a deux genres d’indicateurs: les indicateurs sur place, tels que les marchands de chaînes de sûreté et les marchands d’aiguilles, bimbelotiers d’occasion, faux aveugles, etc., et les indicateurs errants: marchands de balais, faux infirmes, musiciens ambulants: ... Il y avait, sous l’empire, des indicateurs jusque dans le haut commerce parisien.—Mémoires de Monsieur Claude. ”

“ I shall be slow to acknowledge that your harbor or your river is more important than mine, and vice versa. To clear this difficulty, let us have that same statistical information which the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] suggested at the beginning of this session. In that information we shall have a stern, unbending basis of facts—a basis in no wise subject to whim, caprice, or local interest. The pre-limited amount of means will save us from doing too much, and the statistics will save us from doing what we do in wrong places. ”

“ The rise of measurement, the naturalisation of weights and measures brought by commerce, even by conquest, when they are found convenient, the varieties caused by changes of circumstance, the deflections under the constraint of ill-advised rulers, the 309effect of long custom in reconciling to new standards if they can only be arranged conveniently, the shifts by which they can be made endurable, the tendency to resume the old trend along another path—all these traits of human nature are shown in this study. ”

“ Suppose we were considering the chance of a man's house being burnt down, with what collection of attributes should we rest content in this instance? Should we include all kinds of buildings, or only dwelling-houses, or confine ourselves to those where there is much wood, or those which have stoves? All these attributes, and a multitude of others may be present, and, if so, they are all circumstances which help to modify our judgment. We must be guided here by the statistics which we happen to be able to obtain in sufficient numbers. ”

“ Without such a survey we shall find ourselves floating aimlessly among the clouds of fancy instead of treading, with sure foothold, the solid ground of fact. At this point, more perhaps than at any other of our history, a definite, accurate, and comprehensive inventory of conditions is essential. ”

“ But we must emphasize the fact once more that in deciding matters in this way we deal solely with questions of expediency, not with questions of the nature of our mental capacity.
36. Measurement. Measuring is in a certain way the opposite of counting. While, in counting, the things are regarded in advance as individual, and the group, therefore, is a body compounded of discontinuous elements, measuring, on the other hand, consists in co-ordinating numbers with continuous things, that is, in applying to continuous things a concept formed upon the hypothesis of discontinuity. ”

“ The modal or most frequent score is a really useful score with which to compare the record of any individual, although it is not as safe a measure of the central tendency of a distribution as is the median score. ”

“ If I doubt whether a certain handful gives a fair sample, or representative, for purposes of judging value, of a whole carload of grain, I take a number of handfuls from various parts of the car and compare them. If they agree in quality, well and good; if they disagree, we try to get enough samples so that when they are thoroughly mixed the result will be a fair basis for an evaluation. This illustration represents roughly the value of that aspect of scientific control in induction which insists upon multiplying observations instead of basing the conclusion upon one or a few cases. ”

“ Such measurements can give us useful information only when we combine them with observations made without brass instruments, upon the total demeanor of the measured individual, by teachers with eyes in their heads and common sense, and some feeling for the concrete facts of human nature in their hearts. ”

“ Observed Worker Should Realize the Purpose of the Measurement. — The observed worker should be made to realize the purpose and importance of the measurement. The observing should always be done with his full knowledge and hearty coöperation. He will attain much improvement by intelligent coöperation with the observer, and may, in turn, be able to be promoted to observing if he is interested enough to study and prepare himself after hours. ”

“ Accurate measurement of individuals, in actual practice, brings out the fact that lamentably few persons are accustomed to be, or can readily be, measured. It has been a great drawback to the advance of Scientific Management that the moment a measurer of any kind is put on the work, either a device to measure output or a man to measure or to time reactions, motions, or output, the majority of the workers become suspicious. ”

“ Under Scientific Management analysis and synthesis are methods of determining standards from available knowledge. Measurement furnishes the means.
Analyst's Work Is Division. — It is the duty of the analyst to divide the work that he is set to study into the minutest divisions possible. What is possible is determined by the time and money that can be set aside for the investigation. ”

“ The test of the degree in which the science affords safe [pg 630] ground for predicting (and consequently for practically dealing with) what has not yet happened, is the degree in which it would have enabled us to predict what has actually occurred. Before our theory of the influence of a particular cause, in a given state of circumstances, can be entirely trusted, we must be able to explain and account for the existing state of all that portion of the social phenomena which that cause has a tendency to influence. ”

“ The great value of the measurement lies in the fact that it gives us the means of a comprehensive description of the varieties contained in a geographic or social group. A table that informs us of the frequency of various forms as expressed by measurements that occur in a group, gives us a comprehensive view of the variability of the group that we are studying. ”

“ The necessity of qualitative measurement of statements not only per se, but with reference to the sources from which they are drawn, is generally recognized: but historians as yet seldom heed the twin requirement of quantitative measurement of our data in comparison with the sources whence they come. ”

“ First, without such an outside standard of comparison all that is determined by the application of even the most carefully devised tests to any group is that certain individuals are more and certain others are less able in particular ways than the average of the group. ”

“ And when we deliberately set ourselves to obtain uniformities by taking an average result, derived from comparison of a multitude of subjects, our results are, of course, always mechanical in appearance, because the element of individual purpose and initiative has been excluded by ourselves from our data in the very process of taking the average. ”

“ The agent looked important.
"They were invented," he explained, "by Professor Dufunnie, the great psychologist. They are a practical application [4] of psychology. Let me show you how they are used. Allow me—I will take this book—the 'Letters of Junius,' and attach the interest gauge. Here in the back, you see, the gauge is invisible to the reader. You will notice now, if you look through the glass, that the gauge marks zero. No one is reading the book, we have not even opened it, and the human mind is not acting upon the book. ”

“ This is the fact referred to in our preliminary discussion, that every single mental function, which yields to measurement, is found to be distributed among human beings according to a probability curve. ”

“ The employment, in observation, of instruments of precision, and in particular of registering apparatus, and of all those processes which suppress causes of error resulting from the personal peculiarities of the observer, gives to the results of research a degree of certitude which renders indisputable facts properly so called, the only question that remains being as to whether these results have been rightly or wrongly interpreted. ”

“ Although measurement is itself a species of classification, it is distinguished by the adoption of a standard unit of comparison, which, being precise and unvarying, enables us to express the comparisons in precise and unvarying symbols. ”

“ In statistics, it is evident that empirical laws may sometimes be traced; and the tracing them forms an important part of that system of indirect observation on which we must often rely for the data of the Deductive Science. ”

“ If an observer is clever, then, he can use a series of measurements on part of his data-set to ground a guess about a pattern that holds in that data set, and then use that pattern to ground a guess about the values of unmeasured parts of the data set. ”

“ Measurement Important in Psychology. — Measurement has always been of importance in psychology; but it is only with the development of experimental psychology and its special apparatus, that methods of accurate measurements are available which make possible the measurement of extremely short periods of time, or measurements "quick as thought," These enable us to measure the variations of different workers as to their abilities and their mental and physical fatigue ”

“ The results of this final sampling are turned over to experts who make a careful study of the results and of the answers to each question. This enables them to determine the relative value of each individual question and the selection that makes a proper balance.
If a trade test is good, a known expert, when tested, is able to answer all, or nearly all, the questions correctly; a journeyman is able to answer the majority; an apprentice a smaller part, and a novice practically none. ”

“ Those which could not be accurately determined, on account of the nature and extent of the ground requiring a survey, have been estimated by such approximations as were attainable, and these are distinguished wherever they occur. ”

“ So that in this simplest, and perhaps earliest case of quantitative prevision, the phenomena are not only thrust daily upon men's notice, but Nature is, as it were, perpetually repeating that process of measurement by observing which the prevision is effected. ”

“ The last procedure requires discussion; the rest is self evident. In our business isolation is comparatively easy, inasmuch as any individual statement, any visual impression, any effect, etc., may be abstracted without difficulty. Much harder is the determination of its value. If, however, we clearly recognize that it is necessary to express the exact value of each particular source of evidence, and that the task is only to determine comparative valuation, the possibility of such a thing, in at least a sufficiently close degree of certainty, must be granted. ”

“ For by extending the base of observation over a long period, errors due to personal equation, change of circumstance, and other temporary causes, are eliminated from the survey, and the seeker after truth is thus furnished with a trustworthy criterion by which he may verify his conclusions. ”

“ In a word, as we understand by the measure of celestial bodies the relation resulting from the comparison of these bodies with each other, so, by the measure of values, we must understand the relation which results from their comparison. ”

“ External Conditions of Correct Observation.
Before we proceed to draw inferences from any series of recorded facts, we must take care to ascertain perfectly, if possible, the external conditions under which the facts are brought to our notice. Not only may the observing mind be prejudiced and the senses defective, but there may be circumstances which cause one kind of event to come more frequently to our notice than another. The comparative numbers of objects of different kinds existing may in any degree differ from the numbers which come to our notice. ”

“ Give me the statistics of pyrotechnic powder burnt by a people, and I shall tell you the standard measure of their souls and bodies. If the figure be a maximum, then the physical and moral measure will be the minimum, for the ratio is inverse. ”

“ Knowledge being scientific, as it can apply number and measure, an attempt is in order to see if a scientific order of values cannot be built "on a number and measure scale of force," ascent in the scale signifying increase of value, descent diminution of value—all other estimations being prejudices, naïvetés, misunderstandings. ”