I take Gary Peterson's point, but please don't drop that
sometimes lonely little bit about scales of measurement that
you or your textbook addresses. If there aren't obvious
examples in psychology, well maybe it will help students to
know that psychological measurement concepts are different
from those in other disciplines. Or that, temperature, say,
which the students will take to be physics, doesn't always
map to ordinary language-- "twice as hot today, ain't it?"
Or the oddity that in winner-takes-all games, the difference
between the winner and the loser may be very small and that
even the 20th best competitor might be enormously better
than the guy next door. Or that headines like "Our school
worst in nation" might mean diddly -- somebody's got to be
last, for heaven's sake, even if by a whisker. It's not a
bad thing, either, to be able, in later courses, to be able
to ask students "what's absurd about the concept of zero
intelligence?" None of those ideas, simple as they are, had
ever entered my mind until the day that I heard about them
in psyc class. In this case, I think, a little larnin' is a
very helpful thing.
-David
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David G. Likely, Department of Psychology,
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N. B., E3B 5A3 Canada
History of Psychology:
http://www.unb.ca/web/psychology/likely/psyc4053.htm
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