I think that an interesting corollary to this discussion would be to make the following experiment.
Select a pool of temperature couples, like 17-18, 9-10, 22-23, etc Choose a sample of people and place them, one by one, in these two rooms for a minimum period (say, 3 minutes). I mean, get someone put him/her in room 1 where it's 17, then, place him/her in room 2 where it's 18 (evidently, after a period of a few minutes to "unclimatize" the individual to render his/her judgment as unbiased as possible). Then ask the question, which room was warmer/colder. I'd like to propose that regardless of sex, age, etc, the answer to this experiment may indicate that a majority may not be able to tell the difference *conclusively*! But repeat the experiment with a 2-degree C interval and I'm convinced people *now* would be able to confidently claim one way or another. (NOTE: it goes without saying that the humidity parameter would have to be selected so as to render this variable irrelevant to the experiment, i.e. non-influential) Again, a different side of the same coin, so to speak, I guess... Marcus On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:40:45 Terry Simpson wrote: >> Of John S. Ward >>Just because you can't feel the difference doesn't mean others don't. > >I think it is entirely possible that the median JND for room temperature is >less than one degree Celsius. The following is not an argument against that >possibility, but I think it is still relevant....... > > >A thermostat displays a single temperature to the user (e.g. 22 degrees >Celsius), but it actually measures two temperatures. The lower temperature >turns the heating on, the upper turns it off. > >I would be surprised if domestic room temperatures are maintained to +/- 0.5 >degree Fahrenheit of the thermostat setting. > >If there are two installations and one produces actual room temperatures >over a 3 degree range (20.5 to 23.5) and another produces a 1 degree range >(21.5 to 22.5), then our perception of comfort will be different. At any >given setting, we are more likely to be dissatisfied with the upper or lower >temperatures produced by wider range installation. Consequently we will want >to make smaller adjustments. Thus experience with a thermostat in a >particular installation is not necessarily a good indication of JND. > > ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
