Timeline for Can a ratio level variable have negative values?
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Feb 11, 2020 at 0:01 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
Jan 11, 2020 at 21:22 | answer | added | Philipp Cannons | timeline score: -1 | |
Sep 15, 2018 at 12:15 | history | edited | kjetil b halvorsen♦ |
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Sep 14, 2018 at 3:50 | comment | added | whuber♦ | @Bruce Temperature is a good example for the many subtleties it reveals. It took hundreds of years of theory and experiment to determine a suitable way to define and measure temperature: that is, to construct an appropriate scale of measurement. The quantum mechanical issues are no less intriguing, because at absolute zero there is molecular motion (even in classical QM where relativistic effects are ignored). | |
Sep 13, 2018 at 23:19 | comment | added | BruceET | A good example of a ratio scale is temperature. It makes no sense to say 100 degrees F is twice as hot as 50 degrees F. In Celsius that would be 38 and 10, which don't have a 2:1 ratio. But absolute temp is allegedly calibrated so that 0 means no molecular activity. So on an absolute scale, it is meaningful to say one temp is twice as hot as another. On an absolute temperature scale you can't have less than 'no molecular activity' (ignoring quantum stuff), so negative values wouldn't make sense. // I don't know about bank balances: \$20 is twice \$10, but a negative bank balance can happen. | |
Sep 13, 2018 at 22:10 | history | asked | gabryll | CC BY-SA 4.0 |