» Does Measurement Measure Up?: How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth
Rating: 5.0 / 5.00 (4 reviews)
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Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Does Measurement Measure Up?: How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth Details
Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 530.8
EAN: 9780801883750
ISBN: 080188375X
Label: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 248
Publication Date: 2006-03-23
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Studio: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Does Measurement Measure Up?: How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth Reviews
Customer Rating:Summary: Reality of Measurement
Comment: A great explanation of the problems of measuring the unquantifiable. The layman's interests are served with real-world examples.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What's wrong with IQ?
Comment: Like the other reviewers, with the exception of one chapter, I enjoyed this book very much. Henshaw has the touch of writing about technical matters with great clarity. I found his chapter on the environment and global warming especially balanced, unlike all the doomsaying emanating from the media.
However, as someone who was involved for more than thirty years with measuring student abilities in various ways, I found Chapter 6, "Measuring the Mind" very unsatisfactory.
In fact, it is the weakest part of the book and might best have not been included. First of all, Henshaw seems to take as his guide Stephen Jay Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man, a book with a flagrant liberal/socialist bias and totally untrustworthy (for some reason, he uses the 1981 edition. It's just as well because in the edition of 1996 Gould conveniently omits any later research that might weaken his "argument," such as the increasing evidence for a significant correlation between brain size and intelligence.) The liberal mantra is all there in Gould's book: testing bad, IQ bad, ranking people bad, eugenics (however defined, even to the point of avoiding disease) bad, truth is a social construct (see quote below), society controlled by elites, and so on.
Henshaw seems to have taken on Gould's whole agenda, even to the point of endorsing the following view: "Gould argues that `facts' are not objective but are influenced by culture . . .."
Does Henshaw, an engineer, really believe this?
If he wanted to find out about IQ from a real pro, why didn't he use The G Factor by Arthur Jensen?
Unfortunately, Henshaw's (and Gould's) bias has led him to make some mistakes:
1) ". . . intelligence tests are 100% machine-graded . . ." (p. 99)
Not true. The Wechsler is a widely-used individual test and has been around for many years. It's used in clinical diagnosis, to ascertain giftedness and retardation and in many other areas.
2) "The overall size of the skull (and thus the brain) . . .." (p. 102)
There is a significant correlation between brain size and intelligence. See the work of Phillipe Rushton (University of Western Ontario), who reviews all the studies ever done. Gould omits any of these findings.
3) ". . . that attempts to study the heritability of
`intelligence' have been characterized by so much `stupidity'." (p. 129)
Really. Tell Joel Shurkin, author of Terman's Kids, who studied Terman's gifted and their children, and who concluded that intelligence is indeed to a significant extent inherited.
I could go on, but it's obvious that Henshaw's bias has blinded him to much valid and important knowledge about intelligence and intelligence testing, in the broadest sense.
"Before measurement, that is, before a system for numerically characterizing something was developed, what did we have? In a word, ignorance." (p. 187)
Doesn't this apply to mental measurement as well? Henshaw keeps returning to the idea that we don't what intelligence is and so on. That's not the point. Mental measurement is necessary and has proved to be a very effective way of placing people in situations where they will function best.
Surprisingly, Henshaw tells us (p. 89) that in 1989 the American Academy for the Advancement of Science listed the IQ test "as one of the 20 greatest scientific advances of the twentieth century . . .." Maybe he would have been better off listening to them and forgetting about Gould.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wide-Ranging Perspectives on Measurement
Comment: This book's strongest point, in my opinion, is the engaging way in which it was written. Writing on a topic that has the potential of being rather boring to many people because of its subject matter, the author, using a very friendly and chatty style, has produced a book that is fascinating to the point of being difficult to put down. The fields and disciplines that are discussed, always with measurement as the focus, are quite wide-ranging, as one would expect, and topical. In discussing so many diverse disciplines, the author has succeeded admirably in portraying the subject of measurement as a science and as an art, i.e., from many different angles. Because the areas discussed are so diverse, this book is sure to have something of interest for everyone. Because of the fact that we are all subjected to many forms of measurement and that measurement in some form or other is an important part of all of our daily lives, I recommend this book to one and all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Discusses different forms of measurement, how they're translated in society, and where they fail
Comment: DOES MEASUREMENT MEASURE UP? HOW NUMBERS REVEAL & CONCEAL THE TRUTH should be required reading for any serious high school to college-level course in math or statistics: it discusses different forms of measurement, how they're translated in society, and where they fail. From intelligence measuring to measurement of environment hazards and sports, chapters discuss yesterday's records, today's measurement systems, and areas for foggy interpretation of results.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Editorial Review for Does Measurement Measure Up?: How Numbers Reveal and Conceal the Truth:
There was once a time when we could not measure sound, color, blood pressure, or even time. We now find ourselves in the throes of a measurement revolution, from the laboratory to the sports arena, from the classroom to the courtroom, from a strand of DNA to the far reaches of outer space. Measurement controls our lives at work, at school, at home, and even at play. But does all this measurement really measure up? Here, John Henshaw examines the ways in which measurement makes sense or creates nonsense.
Henshaw tells the controversial story of intelligence measurement from Plato to Binet to the early days of the SAT to today's super-quantified world of No Child Left Behind. He clears away the fog on issues of measurement in the environment, such as global warming, hurricanes, and tsunamis, and in the world of computers, from digital photos to MRI to the ballot systems used in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. From cycling and car racing to baseball, tennis, and track-and-field, he chronicles the ever-growing role of measurement in sports, raising important questions about performance and the folly of comparing today's athletes to yesterday's records.
We can't quite measure everything, at least not yet. What could be more difficult to quantify than reasonable doubt? However, even our justice system is yielding to the measurement revolution with new forensic technologies such as DNA fingerprinting.
As we evolve from unquantified ignorance to an imperfect but everpresent state of measured awareness, Henshaw gives us a critical perspective from which we can "measure up" the measurements that have come to affect our lives so greatly.
