• 0 Posts
  • 2 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

help-circle
  • Ha, while funny it still doesn’t work. If we use an interval scale with zero degrees Lat defined as 16 degrees Celsius, how many times hotter is zero degrees Lat than-1 degrees Lat? If you are using “temperature comfort” as your underlying property, zero had to be the university defined “lack of all comfort” which I don’t think you will find. Subjective comfort is notoriously difficult to make into ratio scale. Pain measurement is a well- known example.


  • This is an example I use when I teach data types. It happens because the scale (F or C) is an “interval” scale. Its zero is not based on the absence of the property it is measuring, so you can’t apply a multiplicative transform to it like, “double”.

    It is like lining up by height, calling the shortest person the standard and measure height of everyone else from that. So, the next tallest might be 2 cm, the next 4cm. But clearly the person we are calling 4cm is not twice the height of the person we called 2 cm.