Fwd: Yule (1921) on statistics and mental measurement

[Denny Borsboom]

see below - some good quotes.
best
d


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward Eugene Rigdon <eri...@gsu.edu>
Date: Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 5:17 PM
Subject: Yule (1921) on statistics and mental measurement
To: SEM...@listserv.ua.edu


Wilson's (1928) review of Spearman's The Abilities of Man
referenced statistical pioneer G. Udny Yule's (1921) review of Brown
and Thomson's Essentials of Mental Measurement (2nd Ed.). Thomson was
himself engaged in a feud with Spearman, pitting Thomson's more
complex view of intelligence against Spearman's g theory.

Some quotes:

P. 105
"And (ital)measurement(ital)! Oh dear! Isn't it almost an insult to
the word to term some of these numerical data
(ital)measurements(ital)! They are of the nature of estimates, most
of them, and outrageously bad estimates at that."

Pp. 105-106.
"Statistical methods, I say, should be regarded as ancillary, not
essential. They are only essential where the subject of investigation
is itself an aggregate, as a swarm of atoms, or a crowd. But here the
subject is the individual, not the aggregate of individuals as such.
This being the case, statistical methods are only necessary in so far
as experiment fails to attain its ideal, the ideal of only permitting
one causal circumstance to vary at a time. And it should always be
the aim of the experimenter not to revel in statistical methods (when
he does revel and not swear) but steadily to diminish, by continual
improvement of his experimental methods, the necessity for their use
and the influence ey have on his conclusions. Statistical methods are
not only ancillary; they are, to the experimenter, a warning of
failure."

Yule, G. U. (1921). Critical notice: Review of The essentials of
mental measurement by W. Brown and G. H. Thomson. British Journal of
Psychology, 12, 100-107.

--Ed Rigdon
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Denny Borsboom
Department of Psychology
University of Amsterdam
Weesperplein 4
1018 XA Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31 20 525 6882
d.bor...@uva.nl
http://sites.google.com/site/borsboomdenny/dennyborsboom

[Andrew Kyngdon]

Thanks for the reference Denny. I think the best quote is in the very last
paragraph:

"Failing the possibility of your measuring that which you desire, the lust
for measurement may, for example, merely result in you measuring something
else - and perhaps forgetting the difference - or in ignoring some things
because they cannot be measured."(p.107)

I was sent a paper yesterday on Inspection Time (IT) (Kush, Spring &
Barkland, 2011), in which it was stated that "IT... is an appealing metric
for intelligence"(p.132). That is, if one measures IT, one is not just
measuring a magnitude of time, but a magnitude of intelligence. It would
seem that 90 years later, Yule's (1921) warning still rings true. The lust
for intelligence measurement has resulted in the measurement of a known
physical quantity. But the difference is not forgotten, it is not even
recognised.

As you have pointed out (Borsboom, 2009), the influential monograph titled
"Educational Measurement", does not contain material relevant to its
title.

Cheers,

Andrew

Andrew Kyngdon
MetaMetrics, Inc.
Adj Associate Professor
Graduate School of Education
University of Western Australia

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[drmohamad Ibrahim]

thank you

2012/8/10 Andrew Kyngdon <akyn...@lexile.com>

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