1994 RMT 8:1 pp. 333ff.
Are the terms never and nothing unambiguous?
Edmund: "Do you think [that a career in] the church itself [is] never chosen then?"
Miss Crawford: "Never is a black word. But yes, in the never of conversation which means not very often, I do think it. For what is to be done in the church? ... A clergyman is nothing."
Edmund: "The nothing of conversation has its gradations, I hope, as well as the never."
Jane Austen (1814) Mansfield Park, 1:9
Courtesy of Abe Bookstein
Also: "I never use a big, big D-." "What, never?" "No, never!" "What, never?" "Hardly ever!" (Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore)
We are extremely limited in making direct comparisons in terms of raw scores for the reasons that raw-
score scales are arbitrary and unique. We need a common scale before such comparisons as we have
called for can be made.
Guilford, J. P., (1965), Fundamental Statistics in Psychology and Education, Fourth
Ed., McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. p.513.
Precision
Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject matter admits of, for precision is
not to be sought for alike in all discussions... it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in
each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.
Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics, 1:3
Plus Ça Change ...
We may labor ingeniously at our analyses of results and may bring from afar the most potent methods
which statistical theory has evolved, but we shall accomplish little if our instruments are as grossly
defective as some of those which are now being employed appear to be.
B. R. Buckingham. 1918. Statistical terms and methods. In G. M. Whipple (Ed.). 17th NSSE Yearbook.
Rasch-related papers from IOMW5 (1989), IOMW6 (1991) and IOMW7 (1993):
Volume I (1992), editor: Mark Wilson.
19 papers:
1. Introduction
2. Measurement Practice
3. Measurement Theory
4. Mathematical and Statistical Applications to Measurement
Volume II (1994), editor: Mark Wilson.
18 papers:
1. Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
2. Practice
3. Theory
Volume III (forthcoming), editors:
George Engelhard, Jr. and Mark Wilson.
23 papers:
1 Practice
2. Many-Facet Rasch Model
3. Random Coefficients Multinomial Logit Model
4. Measurement Theory
5. Mathematical and Statistical Applications to Measurement
Ablex Publishing Corporation
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Quotations and notations. … Rasch Measurement Transactions, 1994, 8:1 p.334ff.
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