Steven -
I think this is the same reason my students stopped me and asked for a
better reason than the one I was giving for the mean of 100 and the
standard deviation of 15. They are looking (I think) for a sound
structural reason for why things got to be the way they are today. They
are a GREAT group... they really keep me on my toes!
- Judith Roberts
City College of San Francisco
On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Steven Specht wrote:
>
> I don't think folks are "rescaling" to prevent negative numbers or to avoid
> some situation. That strikes me as implying that, once again, statisticians
> are somehow arbitrarily manipulating numbers for some "convenience" rather
> than for some sound reason. I think most statisticians have better things to
> do (and get paid well for it).
> In order to get negative numbers with the IQ (Intelligence *Quotient*), one of
> the numbers in the ratio would have to be negative. Chronological age, for all
> intents and purposes, cannot be less than zero (unless you're referring to
> fetal age perhaps... but that could be included in the positive as well,
> technically). And mental age of less than zero really wouldn't make sense
> either, unless you're referring to some sort of Buddhist pre-life. Neither of
> these values makes any sense if they were negative. Therefore the quotient
> can't be negative, by definition of the concept, not by rescaling of the
> numbers.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> --
> ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Steven M. Specht, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Psychology
> Psychology Department
> Utica College of Syracuse University
> 1600 Burrstone Rd.
> Utica, NY 13502
> (315) 792-3171
>
> *** be fruitfly and multiple
>
>
>
