Discussion Reply Instructions:

In one reply, critique a classmates discussion post by including the following information:

1. Identify whether your classmate correctly generated examples of each of the four scales of measurement in his/her discussion post. If your classmate did not, correct his/her error(s) by describing how to measure your classmates variable using the four scales of measurement. Explain why your classmates post was correct or incorrect, using more than a yes/no answer and more than a paraphrase of what your classmate posted.
For example, if one of my classmates stated that he/she would use a measurement of participant weight (in pounds) on a scale as a nominal variable, I would explain that weight measured this way is ratio because of the equal distance between intervals and the true zero point. I would suggest that my classmate use descriptive categories such as obese, overweight, normal weight, and underweight to measure participant weight using a nominal scale of measurement.

I would like to test peoples ability to detect odors in the air. The goal is to see how uniform peoples ability is to detect smells. We can compare this data to their age and sex to see if we notice any trends. Will we discover any super smellers?

We would have a 12 foot by 12 foot room in the shape of a cube. It would be sterilized and cleaned of any detectable smells. We would slowly add an odor to the room in very small increments. Additional fragrance would be added every 10 seconds until the subject detected the added smell.

The subjects ability to detect the gas would be a ranking of each person from fastest to slowest on an ordinal scale. We could compare these results on an interval scale when we measure each individuals ability to detect the smell as we compare it to the measurement of the fragrances total volume in the room in parts per million. Zero would be no fragrance.  The ratio scale could be used to measure the specific time it took for the subjects to notice the smell. From 0 for no smell introduced to the time it takes for everyone to eventually detect the smell. We would limit our research to people who have at least some sense of smell. Our categorical scale would rate the people in three groups of sensitivity to smell. Mild, medium and extreme sensitivity.