Re: [humanmarkup-comment] Re: [humanmarkup] Base Schema - measurement-part 2

[James Landrum <James.Landrum@ndsu.nodak.edu>]

Yes on this post and also in response to other post about adding 
measurement to agenda- good idea, along with all the rest- plus, weren't 
you planning on adding bibliography item to the agenda?

One thing to consider is the arbitrary and often researcher specific 
tendencies that influence the scope and scale of measurement and choice 
of measurement_units, and note also that it is not uncommon for social 
scientists to codify the subjective content and "scientificize" their 
data, e.g., good = 1, bad = 0, etc., but I don't think that we should 
worry about that here, just mentioning it for future consideration.
Measurements have context specific properties and the  numeric (e.g., 
1-n) values and the Measurement_Units (e.g., centimeters, 
millimeters,milligrams, or whatever) applied are much more easily 
compartmentalized than are the other sort. Perhaps best to start 
discussion with focus on the numeric and,  measurement_unit standards 
for weights and measures. Then we can do an overview on the more 
subjective qualitative measurement issues.  These are, as always, just 
suggestions.

Emmanuil Batsis (Manos) wrote:

> Hi James,
>
> Absolutelly. We need a hierarchy composed of abstract properties to be 
> used as a toolkit for totally subjective measurments; such an approach 
> is the only way to provide reusable base for vertical applications (== 
> subjective).
>
> I would be interested to hear opinions on whether doing such a 
> hierarchy should climb to the point where properties are aware of 
> types such as primitives (as known from programming languages) or even 
> further.
>
> Personally, I would favour implementation-independent ranges (types) 
> for these properties to be aware of. Sets for example (such RGB color 
> values). Such design techniques can proove usefull to fallback 
> mechanisms without having to deal with 
> platform/implementation/application specific requierments.
>
> If one needs XSD like types, he/she can always import them and extend 
> them; we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Let's try to inovate a 
> little...
>
> Regards,
>
> Manos
>
>
>
> James Landrum wrote:
>
>> Point here is that "measurement" is not the same as "measurement_unit"
>> Measurement is the action of measuring or the result of applying a 
>> unit of measure to an object or subject, based on a measurement 
>> standard (or measurement_unit), expressed most often numerically, 
>> i.e., quantitatively, and more often these are scientifically 
>> "objective" data.  Measurement can can also be expressed 
>> qualitatively, e.g., high, medium, low, short, long, happy, sad, 
>> depressed, manic, etc., and the qualitative measurement is often more 
>> subjective, rather than objective.
>
>
>
>

-- 
From the Desk of James E. Landrum III
Database Manager
Archaeology Technologies Laboratory (ATL; http://atl.ndsu.edu)
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