Quotes About Measurement

The doctor paused and measured his words carefully, scratching and stroking at his wiry broad mustache as if it were a beloved terrier curled under his nose. Matthew wondered what other psychiatrists saw in that repetitive gesture—masturbation? obsession for a long-gone pet?

We have an abundance of "statistics of crime," but no statistics of virtue.

There are many who measure what they are doing by what they can report. They go out with garrulity in the morning, and come back with statistics at night.

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.

If you eat the whole cake without cutting it into slices, then technically you've only had one piece.

Aprill, June, and September, Thirty daies have as November; Ech month else doth never vary From thirty-one, save February; Wich twenty-eight doth still confine, Save on Leap-yeare, then twenty-nine.

Days twenty-eight in second month appear, And one day more is added each leap year: The fourth, eleventh, ninth, and sixth months run To thirty days, — the rest to thirty-one.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

There's little doubt that America is the world's leading producer of serial killers, though any true measurement has to take into account the sheer size of our population. The FBI estimates that there are between thirty and fifty serial killers at large in our country at any given time. That might seem like a shockingly high number, but in a nation of more than 280,000,000 people, it's a minuscule percentage.

Denial and minimizing is often seen in genuine PTSD and, hence, should be a target of detection and measurement.

You can measure the amount of anxiety in any system by the amount of gossip going on.

The fact that establishment scientists say something doesn't exist doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It only means that science has no effective way to measure it.

Efficiency is a ratio, not an absolute.

When we make a measurement on a system, we disturb it, typically by forcing it to interact with a measuring instrument. So Rule 1 does not apply to measurements. This is true not only of measurements, but of any interaction between the system and outside forces. So is there anything special about measurements? Measurements are special because they are where probabilities enter quantum theory.

These last few points are key to how quantum mechanics works, so let me summarize them: The wave represents the quantum state. When we leave the system alone, it changes in time deterministically, according to Rule 1. But the quantum state is only indirectly related to what we observe when we make a measurement, and that relation is not deterministic. The relation between the quantum state

These last few points are key to how quantum mechanics works, so let me summarize them: The wave represents the quantum state. When we leave the system alone, it changes in time deterministically, according to Rule 1. But the quantum state is only indirectly related to what we observe when we make a measurement, and that relation is not deterministic. The relation between the quantum state and what we observe is probabilistic. Randomness enters in a

But, even if the quantum state gives us only probabilities for what we observe, once we get a result, there is something that is definite, because afterward you know exactly what the state is. It is the state corresponding to the result obtained by the measurement. Suppose we measure an electron's momentum, and get the result that the electron is moving north with momentum 17 (in some units). Then, just after the measurement we know that the

17. This is enshrined in a second rule,fn2 which we call Rule 2: The outcome of a measurement can only be predicted probabilistically. But afterward, the measurement changes the quantum state of the system being measured, by putting it in the state corresponding to the result of the measurement. This is called collapse of the wave function.

Rule 2 raises a whole bunch of questions. Does the wave function collapse abruptly or does it take some time? Does the collapse take place as soon as the system interacts with the detector? Or only later, when a record is made? Or perhaps later still, when it is perceived by a conscious mind? Is the collapse a physical change, which means that the quantum state is real? Or is it just a change in our knowledge of the system, which means the

Recent measurements reveal a universe consisting mostly of the unknown. Fully 70 percent of the matter density appears to be in the form of dark energy. Twenty-six percent is dark matter. Only 4 percent is ordinary matter. So less than 1 part in 20 is made out of matter we have observed experimentally or described in the standard model of particle physics. Of the other 96 percent, apart from the properties just mentioned, we know absolutely nothing.

Newton's law of gravity says that the acceleration of any object as it orbits another is proportional to the mass of the body it is orbiting.......Thus if you know the speed of a body in orbit around a star and its distance from the star, you can measure the mass of that star. The same holds for stars in orbit around the center of their galaxy; by measuring the orbital speeds of the stars, you can measure the distribution of mass in that galaxy.

There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.

Don't eat me. I am an inchworm. I am useful. I measure things.

The ship itself was about as long as a football field, or some other really long thing, given that may honestly could never remember how long football fields were. A hundred yards? That was like three hundred feet, wasn't it? The boat did seem long, but she was over five feet tall herself, and that's be like sixty of her end to end. Only sixty? Or was that a lot of herselves? Stupid analogies. The boat was big, that should cover it.