Sorry Ivan Strange mood and recent encounters with lawyer mentalities in consumer industry. [Ripped off by ommissive merchandising] It's not me fighting you, it's commentary about how truth can be more legal than true. Last shot at making the point, I promise.
If you ever gone out and shopped for an amplifier, you won't trust the specs to be clear. Peak power doesn't mean the amp will sound good a over half volume and so on, but using a peak power rating makes the product look good...THEN you may or may not find the fine print at the end of the manual. Nearly everyone tries to make their product look as good as they can without actually lying. Confusion is often deliberately promoted even in the biggest and best. Microsoft never just comes out and says your system might hang or crash now and then. ATI doesn't tell you your expensive video card might make the entire system totally unstable. They leave that for you to find out. Samsung proudly advertizes on one of its DVD players a "full screen button" that gets rid of those midgets and black lines,[Oh look Marge! Now we can watch the same sized TV we bought!] but fails to mention anywhere that the button makes everyone look like Barney Fief [Tall and skinny]. OHH Kaaayy, it does what it says it does but you still can't watch it without going insane. [Legally true but not truthful to the buyers obvious intent and purpose of the function] Now these are major companies with , uh, ethics..right? When Hanna failed to mention that the full scale at 999.9 was not the same as the operational range of 99.9, I lost quite a bit of faith in them. How does one attach a value to something without mentioning what that something is despite its obvious importance to qualifying the value? If you have a one foot ruler with an accurate range within the first inch, the full scale is one foot no matter how fuzzy the lines are after one inch. If then, you state that accuracy is related to the whole ruler, what leads one to assume that the first inch is any different than the whole ruler? Is it the fact that they failed to tell you how long the ruler was...implying that it was only an inch long, by ommission? When I discovered 'all on my own' that my ruler was ten times longer than they implied it was and clearly attached accuracy to the whole thing...not just the first inch, it left a lot of questions about how well it works when attaching accuracy to the range rather than the scale would have made it very clear. "Reads accurately within +/- 2% in an operational range of 99.9 uS with a full scale of 999.9 uS" What's so hard about that? One lousy sentence says it all and places truth beyond reproach. The way they DID state it says "lawyer" all over it. Lawyer means 'who gets away with what', never mind the truth. The two 'could' be the same but don't have to be and the 'system' implies that it always is. [but experience says otherwise] Why do you suppose laywers and the system have their own language? It's certainly not about communicating with clients. Note any similarity between that and merchandising? Were these small hand held meters designed for scientists? Does 'this' meter have more than one scale? [ I don't see any mention of more than one scale OR how big the scale is.] If the instrument does have more than one scale and the specs are not the same throughout, each scale needs a different spec...or at least some mention that there may be differences..or no specs at all. Were the specs written for 'this' meter or not? Ken At 03:06 AM 10/28/02 +1300, you wrote: > >Not sure what your spray about lawyers butts, PhD's etc. has to do >with the interpretation of error in conductivity measurements, your >world clearly is confused. > >But surely not so confused that the difference between a range and a >full scale reading is not clear. >You say:" It would have been easy to have stated accuracy as +/- 2% >within it's intended "range" ...not "full scale". which would make >full scale irrelevant, but they didn't." > >Yes they could have said that for single range meters, but you ignore >the explanation I gave for this... "and is reported as percentage full >scale (this is >because some meters have more than one range and thus the full scale >reading and error is altered accordingly)."...in other words the error >for the range 0-99 is one tenth of the error for the range 0-999. This >also has the added advantage of allowing the direct comparison between >meters as to which is the most accurate. > >For the rest of your message I have no answer... it would be easier to >just duke it out... your place or mine? > >Ivan > >-----Original Message----- >From: Ode Coyote [mailto:[email protected]] >Sent: Monday, 28 October 2002 4:52 a.m. >To: *Silver-List* >Subject: RE: CS>TDS/PWT meters > > > > > >>Hanna's spec reporting is industry standard. >>Full scale and range are two different things. The range is a >>description of an interval of numbers in which the unit will perform >>within spec. Full scale (reading) is largest number within the range. >#### You just said that range and scale are not the same thing, then, >that they are. >It would have been easy to have stated accuracy as +/- 2% within it's >intended "range" ...not "full scale". which would make full scale >irrelevant, but they didn't. Why would that be? >Perhaps Industry Standard 'Reporting' is as full of butt covers as a >lawyers closet. >A covered butt can still toot in tune, [especially if faced off with a >tuning fork before each performance] it just doesn't 'have' to. >The PWT does perform as we apply it better than expected but it's far >from perfect. [it's not 'just' the meter] > >CS is a very weird sort of water. The conductivity changes even in the >same batch. The very act of measuring it seems to change it. [OK, call >it stabilization. Will any two batches stabilize the same?] >The PWT might be great for testing salinity. Saline solutions are >pretty stable. CS? Who knows? >Are we mixing our own metaphors? [Absolutely! Measuring apple sauce to >see how many oranges there are.] > >I have not been 'happy' with ANY of the methods for measuring PPM >including the various ways that labs do it. I also know it doesn't >matter that much as long as we stay within a nebulous range of common >sense. >We're not feeding it into a computer. It doesn't take a furniture >maker to adequately frame a house. >I won't let something like that ruin my day. It's just no big >deal..like an apple to an elephant. >But it does take some explaining to those who want precise numbers and >can't get them. >People expect and demand certainty and tend to get certainty from >people who will give it to them whether or not there really is any. >Then they wonder why so many people say so many different things and >why their results don't exactly match any of the statements. >Not enough butt covers leads to em-bare-ass-ment? {Sure. That's the >way the real weird world of comparisons works} > >Does PHD stand for piled high deniability? > >The mountain, to the ant vs the elephant, is but a matter of relative >time and awareness. Neither probably gives a hoot, being focused on >eating the apples and oranges found along the way. But an apple to an >elephant is a morsal while it's a mountain of food to an ant. >[something worth fighting over] > >Moral to the story: >The CS you like the best is the best CS. >If there's some way to make something different, 'that' may become the >best CS that you like best. >Batch to batch repeatability is more important than person to person >comparison. In that, a Hanna meter does OK and the PWT does that >better than the other Hanna meters no matter what the specs say or how >they read. >It would seem that everything having to do with CS is subjectively >relative, CS still does what it does and it's hard to hurt yourself >with it if ANY degree of common sense is employed. >Common sense doesn't rely on specific numbers. >Being 'more right' doesn't make anyone totally wrong. > >The world is clearly confused. Why not admit that nothing is what it >looks like? >Ken > >It stands to reason, then reason wobbles around its eccentricity. >> >> >>The absolute determination of ppm as silver ions etc. may be >>difficult, but the measurement of conductivity is not. Discrepancies >>between different meters can be overcome by multi-point calibration >>within the expected range. >## The tuning fork. If one was not used, don't even 'think' about an >arguement...then think twice about apples and oranges. >Discrepencies are not entirely due to the instrumentation, however, >Hanna could have stated their specs without mixing them up. >> > >> >>A mountain to an ant is what to an elephant? >> > > > > >-- >The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. > >Instructions for unsubscribing may be found at: http://silverlist.org > >To post, address your message to: [email protected] > >Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html > >List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]> > >
