Re: [tips] so how cold was it? The Waffle House Index

John Kulig Wed, 29 Jan 2014 10:53:17 -0800

Now is this ordinal or interval scaling? Cool

Another odd metric: I introduced my class yesterday to Oliver Smoot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot) who used his body to measure the Harvard Bridge. It's my understanding that after he tired, his brothers dragged his body for each successive smoot. The Smoot markers turned out to be useful. From Wikipedia:

The markings have become well accepted by the public, to the degree that during the bridge renovations that occurred in the 1980s, the Cambridge Police department requested that the markings be maintained, since they had become useful for identifying the location of accidents on the bridge.^[12] The renovators went one better, by scoring the concrete surface of the sidewalk on the bridge at 5 foot 7 inch intervals, instead of the conventional six feet.^[13]

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John W. Kulig, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Coordinator, Psychology Honors
Plymouth State University
Plymouth NH 03264
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From: "Claudia Stanny" <[email protected]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2014 1:41:43 PM
Subject: [tips] so how cold was it? The Waffle House Index

For those who love odd metrics:

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2014/01/how_bad_was_the_storm_using_th.html

Almost as much fun as the miniHelen (the amount of beauty required to launch one ship). :-)

Claudia

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Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D.
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