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APPENDIX E.   239

arithmetical mean is more likely to be the true measurement than any other quantity that can be named.

This assumption cannot be justified in vital phenomena. For example, suppose we endeavour to match a tint; Weber's law, in its approximative and simplest form, of Sensation varying as the logarithm of the Stimulus, tells us that a series of tints, in which the quantities of white scattered on a black ground are as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, &c., will appear to the eye to be separated by equal intervals of tint. Therefore, in matching a grey that contains 8 portions of white, we are just as likely to err by selecting one that has 16 portions as one that has 4 portions. In the first case there would be an error in excess, of 8 units of absolute tint ; in the second there would be an error in deficiency, of 4. Therefore, an error of the same magnitude in excess or in deficiency is not equally probable in the judgment of tints by the eye. Conversely, if two persons, who are equally good judges, describe their impressions of a certain tint, and one says that it contains 4 portions of white and the other that it contains 16 portions, the most reasonable conelnsion is that it really contains 8 portions. The arithmetic mean of the two estimates is 10, which is not the most probable value; it is the geometric mean 8, (4 :8: :8 :16), which is the most probable.

Precisely the same condition characterises every determination by each of the senses; for example, in judging of the weight of bodies or of their temperatures, of the loudness and of the pitches of tones, and of estimates of lengths and distances as wholes. Thus, three rods of the lengths a, b, c, when taken successively in the hand, appear to differ by equal intervals when a : b : : b : c, and not when a-b=b - c. In all physiological phenomena, where there is on the one hand a stimulus and on the other a response to that stimulus Weber's or some other geometric law may be assumed to prevail in other words, the true mean is geometric rather than arithmetic.

The geometric mean appears to be equally applicable to the majority of the influences, which, combined with those of purely vital phenomena, give rise to the events with which sociology deals. It is difficult to find terms sufficiently general to apply to the varied topics of sociology, but there are two categories which are of common occurrence in which the geometric mean is certainly appropriate. The one is increase, as exemplified by the growth of population, where an