The measure of the thing

Recently, if you follow such things, there has been some internet chatter about the possibility that some CERN scientists (the LHC chaps) have found neutrinos travelling faster than light. For those of us focused on the mortgage and such like this is fairly dull news but for physicist this would put a major dent in the theory of relativity and everything else that is built on this theory, hence the chatter.


Because of the importance of this issue a lot of attention has been focused on the experiment and some criticism made of the accuracy of the measurements involved. One of the measuring devices (don’t ask me which one) had a potential error rate of 30 billionth of a second, which apparently at light speed could be an issue so they have improved it down to 3 billionth of a second for their second try. (Just sit and try and imagine how small that is for a moment.). Next issue is the distance from the start of the race and the end, they are using about 450km and for some reason an exact measurement of this is important also. (I would have thought if both things travel the same distance and one is first the exact distance wouldn’t matter, shows what I know) But the main point is that measurement is important if you want the correct answer.

It reminded me that we are quite keen on measuring things, you can go to university and do a 4 year course on it if you like (surveying). It also reminded me of when we adopted the metric system in this country and there was an extended education campaign. As a kid the most memorable item was a ruler that had inches on one side and centimetres on the other side. It was made of wood and made a very satisfactory sound if one end was held by the lid of my desk and the other end was twanged to make it vibrate. Very educational but probably more about the relationship of pitch to wave length, (not that I could have told you that at the time), than measurement.

So of course the measurement issue comes up a lot, if you want your view point to sound authoritive it doesn’t hurt to have some numbers or statistics to back it up. A technique that I frequently use myself I will admit. But there are some numbers that are simply irritating due to their actual lack of substance versus their perceived importance.

One that irritates me a lot is the “Poverty Line” we hear all the time that people are this or that in relation to the Poverty Line. Well let’s start with, in NZ there is no such agreed number. So this so called line is presumably where people wish to place it which isn’t much of a yard stick is it.

A recent idea that has had a bit of press lately is “there are 220,000 children living in poverty” this comes from the commissioner for children and he has at least had the good manners to define what in his view poverty is and according to him these children are living in households with income less than 60% of the median income. OK so what is the median income, well according to Statistics NZ’s June 2011 survey it is now just a touch under $41,000 per annum, so 60% of that is approx $25,000. So to make the remark easier to understand if you have an income of less than $25,000 and you have children you are according to the children’s commissioner living in poverty.

So who are these people, well despite my dislike of the idea of minimum wage legislation this is useful in this conversation as it is currently $13 per hour or roughly $26,000 per annum. Therefore it is easy to conclude based on the above that poor people in NZ are those that either don’t work or only work part time. (for whatever reason) So reframed the idea is “If you don’t work you don’t earn much” Gee what a shock.

Yes, yes I know there is no work out there etc, but that is a different issue isn’t it. Do we really expect people who don’t work to be well off?