A Primer to Scales of Measurement*

 Nominal Scale (Identification)

1) A female teacher died during poll duty due to Corona (allegedly)

Gender: Female; Occupation: Teacher; Cause of death: Corona(allegedly)

2) A Muslim Auto-rickshaw driver converts his auto-rickshaw into a makeshift ambulance

Religion: Islam; Occupation: Driver, Cause of action: Humanity (hopefully)

Does death identify Gender, Occupation and Religion?

How someone measures humanity; in empty words of leaders or a common man’s action?

Ordinal Scale (Identification + Order)

1) India ranks now at position 2 in corona cases

2) In World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), India ranks at 142

              Don’t look only at number, look at what is being measured

              Sometimes being in the top three hurts so much

Interval Scale (Identification + Order + Difference)

1) Channel ‘A’ shows celebrity vacations, cricket and exit polls and has a TRP rating of 130

2) Channel ‘B’ shows death toll, the plight of migratory mammals and has a TRP rating of 70

Let us applaud ourselves for our absolute apathy

And enjoy our luxury while half of the nation hitch and hike between death and poverty

Ratio Scale (Identification + Order + Difference + Universally accepted starting point)

1) 211,835+ deaths due to corona till date

2) Oxygen Level follow below eighty, a person gasps for breath, while Oxygen cylinders wait to delivered after our leaders’ debate

            I guess when they rewrite history in few years about our greatest fight against the crisis

They might be able to change the scale of death and show the numbers dead in negative

 

*for death and its aftermath