A Simple Example of How Better Measurement Creates New Market Efficiencies, Reduces Transaction Costs, and Enables the Pricing of Intangible Assets

One of the ironies of life is that we often overlook the obvious in favor of the obscure. And so one hears of huge resources poured into finding and capitalizing on opportunities that provide infinitesimally small returns, while other opportunities—with equally certain odds of success but far more profitable returns—are completely neglected.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) reports returns on investment ranging from 32% to over 400% in 32 metrological improvements made in semiconductors, construction, automation, computers, materials, manufacturing, chemicals, photonics, communications and pharmaceuticals (NIST, 2009). Previous posts in this blog offer more information on the economic value of metrology. The point is that the returns obtained from improvements in the measurement of tangible assets will likely also be achieved in the measurement of intangible assets.

How? With a little bit of imagination, each stage in the development of increasingly meaningful, efficient, and useful measures described in this previous post can be seen as implying a significant return on investment. As those returns are sought, investors will coordinate and align different technologies and resources relative to a roadmap of how these stages are likely to unfold in the future, as described in this previous post. The basic concepts of how efficient and meaningful measurement reduces transaction costs and market frictions, and how it brings capital to life, are explained and documented in my publications (Fisher, 2002-2011), but what would a concrete example of the new value created look like?

The examples I have in mind hinge on the difference between counting and measuring. Counting is a natural and obvious thing to do when we need some indication of how much of something there is. But counting is not measuring (Cooper & Humphry, 2010; Wright, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1999). This is not some minor academic distinction of no practical use or consequence. It is rather the source of the vast majority of the problems we have in comparing outcome and performance measures.

Imagine how things would be if we couldn’t weigh fruit in a grocery store, and all we could do was count pieces. We can tell when eight small oranges possess less overall mass of fruit than four large ones by weighing them; the eight small oranges might weigh .75 kilograms (about 1.6 pounds) while the four large ones come in at 1.0 kilo (2.2 pounds). If oranges were sold by count instead of weight, perceptive traders would buy small oranges and make more money selling them than they could if they bought large ones.

But we can’t currently arrive so easily at the comparisons we need when we’re buying and selling intangible assets, like those produced as the outcomes of educational, health care, or other services. So I want to walk through a couple of very down-to-earth examples to bring the point home. Today we’ll focus on the simplest version of the story, and tomorrow we’ll take up a little more complicated version, dealing with the counts, percentages, and scores used in balanced scorecard and dashboard metrics of various kinds.

What if you score eight on one reading test and I score four on a different reading test? Who has more reading ability? In the same way that we might be able to tell just by looking that eight small oranges are likely to have less actual orange fruit than four big ones, we might also be able to tell just by looking that eight easy (short, common) words can likely be read correctly with less reading ability than four difficult (long, rare) words can be.

So let’s analyze the difference between buying oranges and buying reading ability. We’ll set up three scenarios for buying reading ability. In all three, we’ll imagine we’re comparing how we buy oranges with the way we would have to go about buying reading ability today if teachers were paid for the gains made on the tests they administer at the beginning and end of the school year.

In the first scenario, the teachers make up their own tests. In the second, the teachers each use a different standardized test. In the third, each teacher uses a computer program that draws questions from the same online bank of precalibrated items to construct a unique test custom tailored to each student. Reading ability scenario one is likely the most commonly found in real life. Scenario three is the rarest, but nonetheless describes a situation that has been available to millions of students in the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere for several years. Scenarios one, two and three correspond with developmental levels one, three, and five described in a previous blog entry.

Buying Oranges

When you go into one grocery store and I go into another, we don’t have any oranges with us. When we leave, I have eight and you have four. I have twice as many oranges as you, but yours weigh a kilo, about a third more than mine (.75 kilos).

When we paid for the oranges, the transaction was finished in a few seconds. Neither one of us experienced any confusion, annoyance, or inconvenience in relation to the quality of information we had on the amount of orange fruits we were buying. I did not, however, pay twice as much as you did. In fact, you paid more for yours than I did for mine, in direct proportion to the difference in the measured amounts.

No negotiations were necessary to consummate the transactions, and there was no need for special inquiries about how much orange we were buying. We knew from experience in this and other stores that the prices we paid were comparable with those offered in other times and places. Our information was cheap, as it was printed on the bag of oranges or could be read off a scale, and it was very high quality, as the measures were directly comparable with measures from any other scale in any other store. So, in buying oranges, the impact of information quality on the overall cost of the transaction was so inexpensive as to be negligible.

Buying Reading Ability (Scenario 1)

So now you and I go through third grade as eight year olds. You’re in one school and I’m in another. We have different teachers. Each teacher makes up his or her own reading tests. When we started the school year, we each took a reading test (different ones), and we took another (again, different ones) as we ended the school year.

For each test, your teacher counted up your correct answers and divided by the total number of questions; so did mine. You got 72% correct on the first one, and 94% correct on the last one. I got 83% correct on the first one, and 86% correct on the last one. Your score went up 22%, much more than the 3% mine went up. But did you learn more? It is impossible to tell. What if both of your tests were easier—not just for you or for me but for everyone—than both of mine? What if my second test was a lot harder than my first one? On the other hand, what if your tests were harder than mine? Perhaps you did even better than your scores seem to indicate.

We’ll just exclude from consideration other factors that might come to bear, such as whether your tests were significantly longer or shorter than mine, or if one of us ran out of time and did not answer a lot of questions.

If our parents had to pay the reading teacher at the end of the school year for the gains that were made, how would they tell what they were getting for their money? What if your teacher gave a hard test at the start of the year and an easy one at the end of the year so that you’d have a big gain and your parents would have to pay more? What if my teacher gave an easy test at the start of the year and a hard one at the end, so that a really high price could be put on very small gains? If our parents were to compare their experiences in buying our improved reading ability, they would have a lot of questions about how much improvement was actually obtained. They would be confused and annoyed at how inconvenient the scores are, because they are difficult, if not impossible, to compare. A lot of time and effort might be invested in examining the words and sentences in each of the four reading tests to try to determine how easy or hard they are in relation to each other. Or, more likely, everyone would throw their hands up and pay as little as they possibly can for outcomes they don’t understand.

Buying Reading Ability (Scenario 2)

In this scenario, we are third graders again, in different schools with different reading teachers. Now, instead of our teachers making up their own tests, our reading abilities are measured at the beginning and the end of the school year using two different standardized tests sold by competing testing companies. You’re in a private suburban school that’s part of an independent schools association. I’m in a public school along with dozens of others in an urban school district.

For each test, our parents received a report in the mail showing our scores. As before, we know how many questions we each answered correctly, and, unlike before, we don’t know which particular questions we got right or wrong. Finally, we don’t know how easy or hard your tests were relative to mine, but we know that the two tests you took were equated, and so were the two I took. That means your tests will show how much reading ability you gained, and so will mine.

We have one new bit of information we didn’t have before, and that’s a percentile score. Now we know that at the beginning of the year, with a percentile ranking of 72, you performed better than 72% of the other private school third graders taking this test, and at the end of the year you performed better than 76% of them. In contrast, I had percentiles of 84 and 89.

The question we have to ask now is if our parents are going to pay for the percentile gain, or for the actual gain in reading ability. You and I each learned more than our peers did on average, since our percentile scores went up, but this would not work out as a satisfactory way to pay teachers. Averages being averages, if you and I learned more and faster, someone else learned less and slower, so that, in the end, it all balances out. Are we to have teachers paying parents when their children learn less, simply redistributing money in a zero sum game?

And so, additional individualized reports are sent to our parents by the testing companies. Your tests are equated with each other, and they measure in a comparable unit that ranges from 120 to 480. You had a starting score of 235 and finished the year with a score of 420, for a gain of 185.

The tests I took are comparable and measure in the same unit, too, but not the same unit as your tests measure in. Scores on my tests range from 400 to 1200. I started the year with a score of 790, and finished at 1080, for a gain of 290.

Now the confusion in the first scenario is overcome, in part. Our parents can see that we each made real gains in reading ability. The difficulty levels of the two tests you took are the same, as are the difficulties of the two tests I took. But our parents still don’t know what to pay the teacher because they can’t tell if you or I learned more. You had lower percentiles and test scores than I did, but you are being compared with what is likely a higher scoring group of suburban and higher socioeconomic status students than the urban group of disadvantaged students I’m compared against. And your scores aren’t comparable with mine, so you might have started and finished with more reading ability than I did, or maybe I had more than you. There isn’t enough information here to tell.

So, again, the information that is provided is insufficient to the task of settling on a reasonable price for the outcomes obtained. Our parents will again be annoyed and confused by the low quality information that makes it impossible to know what to pay the teacher.

Buying Reading Ability (Scenario 3)

In the third scenario, we are still third graders in different schools with different reading teachers. This time our reading abilities are measured by tests that are completely unique. Every student has a test custom tailored to their particular ability. Unlike the tests in the first and second scenarios, however, now all of the tests have been constructed carefully on the basis of extensive data analysis and experimental tests. Different testing companies are providing the service, but they have gone to the trouble to work together to create consensus standards defining the unit of measurement for any and all reading test items.

For each test, our parents received a report in the mail showing our measures. As before, we know how many questions we each answered correctly. Now, though we don’t know which particular questions we got right or wrong, we can see typical items ordered by difficulty lined up in a way that shows us what kind of items we got wrong, and which kind we got right. And now we also know your tests were equated relative to mine, so we can compare how much reading ability you gained relative to how much I gained. Now our parents can confidently determine how much they should pay the teacher, at least in proportion to their children’s relative measures. If our measured gains are equal, the same payment can be made. If one of us obtained more value, then proportionately more should be paid.

In this third scenario, we have a situation directly analogous to buying oranges. You have a measured amount of increased reading ability that is expressed in the same unit as my gain in reading ability, just as the weights of the oranges are comparable. Further, your test items were not identical with mine, and so the difficulties of the items we took surely differed, just as the sizes of the oranges we bought did.

This third scenario could be made yet more efficient by removing the need for creating and maintaining a calibrated item bank, as described by Stenner and Stone (2003) and in the sixth developmental level in a prior blog post here. Also, additional efficiencies could be gained by unifying the interpretation of the reading ability measures, so that progress through high school can be tracked with respect to the reading demands of adult life (Williamson, 2008).

Comparison of the Purchasing Experiences

In contrast with the grocery store experience, paying for increased reading ability in the first scenario is fraught with low quality information that greatly increases the cost of the transactions. The information is of such low quality that, of course, hardly anyone bothers to go to the trouble to try to decipher it. Too much cost is associated with the effort to make it worthwhile. So, no one knows how much gain in reading ability is obtained, or what a unit gain might cost.

When a school district or educational researchers mount studies to try to find out what it costs to improve reading ability in third graders in some standardized unit, they find so much unexplained variation in the costs that they, too, raise more questions than answers.

In grocery stores and other markets, we don’t place the cost of making the value comparison on the consumer or the merchant. Instead, society as a whole picks up the cost by funding the creation and maintenance of consensus standard metrics. Until we take up the task of doing the same thing for intangible assets, we cannot expect human, social, and natural capital markets to obtain the efficiencies we take for granted in markets for tangible assets and property.

References

Cooper, G., & Humphry, S. M. (2010). The ontological distinction between units and entities. Synthese, pp. DOI 10.1007/s11229-010-9832-1.

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2002, Spring). “The Mystery of Capital” and the human sciences. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 15(4), 854 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt154j.htm].

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2003). Measurement and communities of inquiry. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 17(3), 936-8 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt173.pdf].

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2004, October). Meaning and method in the social sciences. Human Studies: A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 27(4), 429-54.

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2005). Daredevil barnstorming to the tipping point: New aspirations for the human sciences. Journal of Applied Measurement, 6(3), 173-9 [http://www.livingcapitalmetrics.com/images/FisherJAM05.pdf].

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2007, Summer). Living capital metrics. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 21(1), 1092-3 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt211.pdf].

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2009a, November). Invariance and traceability for measures of human, social, and natural capital: Theory and application. Measurement, 42(9), 1278-1287.

Fisher, W. P.. Jr. (2009b). NIST Critical national need idea White Paper: Metrological infrastructure for human, social, and natural capital (Tech. Rep., http://www.livingcapitalmetrics.com/images/FisherNISTWhitePaper2.pdf). New Orleans: LivingCapitalMetrics.com.

Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2011). Bringing human, social, and natural capital to life: Practical consequences and opportunities. Journal of Applied Measurement, 12(1), in press.

NIST. (2009, 20 July). Outputs and outcomes of NIST laboratory research. Available: http://www.nist.gov/director/planning/studies.cfm (Accessed 1 March 2011).

Stenner, A. J., & Stone, M. (2003). Item specification vs. item banking. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 17(3), 929-30 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt173a.htm].

Williamson, G. L. (2008). A text readability continuum for postsecondary readiness. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(4), 602-632.

Wright, B. D. (1989). Rasch model from counting right answers: Raw scores as sufficient statistics. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 3(2), 62 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt32e.htm].

Wright, B. D. (1992, Summer). Scores are not measures. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 6(1), 208 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt61n.htm].

Wright, B. D. (1993). Thinking with raw scores. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 7(2), 299-300 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt72r.htm].

Wright, B. D. (1999). Common sense for measurement. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 13(3), 704-5  [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt133h.htm].

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Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.livingcapitalmetrics.com.

 

One of the ironies of life is that we often overlook the obvious in favor of the obscure. And so one hears of huge resources poured into finding and capitalizing on opportunities that provide infinitesimally small returns, while other opportunities—with equally certain odds of success but far more profitable returns—are completely neglected.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) reports returns on investment ranging from 32% to over 400% in 32 metrological improvements made in semiconductors, construction, automation, computers, materials, manufacturing, chemicals, photonics, communications and pharmaceuticals (NIST, 2009). Previous posts in this blog offer more information on the economic value of metrology. The point is that the returns obtained from improvements in the measurement of tangible assets will likely also be achieved in the measurement of intangible assets.

How? With a little bit of imagination, each stage in the development of increasingly meaningful, efficient, and useful measures described in this previous post can be seen as implying a significant return on investment. As those returns are sought, investors will coordinate and align different technologies and resources relative to a roadmap of how these stages are likely to unfold in the future, as described in this previous post. But what would a concrete example of the new value created look like?

The examples I have in mind hinge on the difference between counting and measuring. Counting is a natural and obvious thing to do when we need some indication of how much of something there is. But counting is not measuring (Cooper & Humphry, 2010; Wright, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1999). This is not some minor academic distinction of no practical use or consequence. It is rather the source of the vast majority of the problems we have in comparing outcome and performance measures.

Imagine how things would be if we couldn’t weigh fruit in a grocery store, and all we could do was count pieces. We can tell when eight small oranges possess less overall mass of fruit than four large ones by weighing them; the eight small oranges might weigh .75 kilograms (about 1.6 pounds) while the four large ones come in at 1.0 kilo (2.2 pounds). If oranges were sold by count instead of weight, perceptive traders would buy small oranges and make more money selling them than they could if they bought large ones.

But we can’t currently arrive so easily at the comparisons we need when we’re buying and selling intangible assets, like those produced as the outcomes of educational, health care, or other services. So I want to walk through a couple of very down-to-earth examples to bring the point home. Today we’ll focus on the simplest version of the story, and tomorrow we’ll take up a little more complicated version, dealing with the counts, percentages, and scores used in balanced scorecard and dashboard metrics of various kinds.

What if you score eight on one reading test and I score four on a different reading test? Who has more reading ability? In the same way that we might be able to tell just by looking that eight small oranges are likely to have less actual orange fruit than four big ones, we might also be able to tell just by looking that eight easy (short, common) words can likely be read correctly with less reading ability than four difficult (long, rare) words can be.

So let’s analyze the difference between buying oranges and buying reading ability. We’ll set up three scenarios for buying reading ability. In all three, we’ll imagine we’re comparing how we buy oranges with the way we would have to go about buying reading ability today if teachers were paid for the gains made on the tests they administer at the beginning and end of the school year.

In the first scenario, the teachers make up their own tests. In the second, the teachers each use a different standardized test. In the third, each teacher uses a computer program that draws questions from the same online bank of precalibrated items to construct a unique test custom tailored to each student. Reading ability scenario one is likely the most commonly found in real life. Scenario three is the rarest, but nonetheless describes a situation that has been available to millions of students in the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere for several years. Scenarios one, two and three correspond with developmental levels one, three, and five described in a previous blog entry.

Buying Oranges

When you go into one grocery store and I go into another, we don’t have any oranges with us. When we leave, I have eight and you have four. I have twice as many oranges as you, but yours weigh a kilo, about a third more than mine (.75 kilos).

When we paid for the oranges, the transaction was finished in a few seconds. Neither one of us experienced any confusion, annoyance, or inconvenience in relation to the quality of information we had on the amount of orange fruits we were buying. I did not, however, pay twice as much as you did. In fact, you paid more for yours than I did for mine, in direct proportion to the difference in the measured amounts.

No negotiations were necessary to consummate the transactions, and there was no need for special inquiries about how much orange we were buying. We knew from experience in this and other stores that the prices we paid were comparable with those offered in other times and places. Our information was cheap, as it was printed on the bag of oranges or could be read off a scale, and it was very high quality, as the measures were directly comparable with measures from any other scale in any other store. So, in buying oranges, the impact of information quality on the overall cost of the transaction was so inexpensive as to be negligible.

Buying Reading Ability (Scenario 1)

So now you and I go through third grade as eight year olds. You’re in one school and I’m in another. We have different teachers. Each teacher makes up his or her own reading tests. When we started the school year, we each took a reading test (different ones), and we took another (again, different ones) as we ended the school year.

For each test, your teacher counted up your correct answers and divided by the total number of questions; so did mine. You got 72% correct on the first one, and 94% correct on the last one. I got 83% correct on the first one, and 86% correct on the last one. Your score went up 22%, much more than the 3% mine went up. But did you learn more? It is impossible to tell. What if both of your tests were easier—not just for you or for me but for everyone—than both of mine? What if my second test was a lot harder than my first one? On the other hand, what if your tests were harder than mine? Perhaps you did even better than your scores seem to indicate.

We’ll just exclude from consideration other factors that might come to bear, such as whether your tests were significantly longer or shorter than mine, or if one of us ran out of time and did not answer a lot of questions.

If our parents had to pay the reading teacher at the end of the school year for the gains that were made, how would they tell what they were getting for their money? What if your teacher gave a hard test at the start of the year and an easy one at the end of the year so that you’d have a big gain and your parents would have to pay more? What if my teacher gave an easy test at the start of the year and a hard one at the end, so that a really high price could be put on very small gains? If our parents were to compare their experiences in buying our improved reading ability, they would have a lot of questions about how much improvement was actually obtained. They would be confused and annoyed at how inconvenient the scores are, because they are difficult, if not impossible, to compare. A lot of time and effort might be invested in examining the words and sentences in each of the four reading tests to try to determine how easy or hard they are in relation to each other. Or, more likely, everyone would throw their hands up and pay as little as they possibly can for outcomes they don’t understand.

Buying Reading Ability (Scenario 2)

In this scenario, we are third graders again, in different schools with different reading teachers. Now, instead of our teachers making up their own tests, our reading abilities are measured at the beginning and the end of the school year using two different standardized tests sold by competing testing companies. You’re in a private suburban school that’s part of an independent schools association. I’m in a public school along with dozens of others in an urban school district.

For each test, our parents received a report in the mail showing our scores. As before, we know how many questions we each answered correctly, and, as before, we don’t know which particular questions we got right or wrong. Finally, we don’t know how easy or hard your tests were relative to mine, but we know that the two tests you took were equated, and so were the two I took. That means your tests will show how much reading ability you gained, and so will mine.

But we have one new bit of information we didn’t have before, and that’s a percentile score. Now we know that at the beginning of the year, with a percentile ranking of 72, you performed better than 72% of the other private school third graders taking this test, and at the end of the year you performed better than 76% of them. In contrast, I had percentiles of 84 and 89.

The question we have to ask now is if our parents are going to pay for the percentile gain, or for the actual gain in reading ability. You and I each learned more than our peers did on average, since our percentile scores went up, but this would not work out as a satisfactory way to pay teachers. Averages being averages, if you and I learned more and faster, someone else learned less and slower, so that, in the end, it all balances out. Are we to have teachers paying parents when their children learn less, simply redistributing money in a zero sum game?

And so, additional individualized reports are sent to our parents by the testing companies. Your tests are equated with each other, so they measure in a comparable unit that ranges from 120 to 480. You had a starting score of 235 and finished the year with a score of 420, for a gain of 185.

The tests I took are comparable and measure in the same unit, too, but not the same unit as your tests measure in. Scores on my tests range from 400 to 1200. I started the year with a score of 790, and finished at 1080, for a gain of 290.

Now the confusion in the first scenario is overcome, in part. Our parents can see that we each made real gains in reading ability. The difficulty levels of the two tests you took are the same, as are the difficulties of the two tests I took. But our parents still don’t know what to pay the teacher because they can’t tell if you or I learned more. You had lower percentiles and test scores than I did, but you are being compared with what is likely a higher scoring group of suburban and higher socioeconomic status students than the urban group of disadvantaged students I’m compared against. And your scores aren’t comparable with mine, so you might have started and finished with more reading ability than I did, or maybe I had more than you. There isn’t enough information here to tell.

So, again, the information that is provided is insufficient to the task of settling on a reasonable price for the outcomes obtained. Our parents will again be annoyed and confused by the low quality information that makes it impossible to know what to pay the teacher.

Buying Reading Ability (Scenario 3)

In the third scenario, we are still third graders in different schools with different reading teachers. This time our reading abilities are measured by tests that are completely unique. Every student has a test custom tailored to their particular ability. Unlike the tests in the first and second scenarios, however, now all of the tests have been constructed carefully on the basis of extensive data analysis and experimental tests. Different testing companies are providing the service, but they have gone to the trouble to work together to create consensus standards defining the unit of measurement for any and all reading test items.

For each test, our parents received a report in the mail showing our measures. As before, we know how many questions we each answered correctly. Now, though we don’t know which particular questions we got right or wrong, we can see typical items ordered by difficulty lined up in a way that shows us what kind of items we got wrong, and which kind we got right. And now we also know your tests were equated relative to mine, so we can compare how much reading ability you gained relative to how much I gained. Now our parents can confidently determine how much they should pay the teacher, at least in proportion to their children’s relative measures. If our measured gains are equal, the same payment can be made. If one of us obtained more value, then proportionately more should be paid.

In this third scenario, we have a situation directly analogous to buying oranges. You have a measured amount of increased reading ability that is expressed in the same unit as my gain in reading ability, just as the weights of the oranges are comparable. Further, your test items were not identical with mine, and so the difficulties of the items we took surely differed, just as the sizes of the oranges we bought did.

This third scenario could be made yet more efficient by removing the need for creating and maintaining a calibrated item bank, as described by Stenner and Stone (2003) and in the sixth developmental level in a prior blog post here. Also, additional efficiencies could be gained by unifying the interpretation of the reading ability measures, so that progress through high school can be tracked with respect to the reading demands of adult life (Williamson, 2008).

Comparison of the Purchasing Experiences

In contrast with the grocery store experience, paying for increased reading ability in the first scenario is fraught with low quality information that greatly increases the cost of the transactions. The information is of such low quality that, of course, hardly anyone bothers to go to the trouble to try to decipher it. Too much cost is associated with the effort to make it worthwhile. So, no one knows how much gain in reading ability is obtained, or what a unit gain might cost.

When a school district or educational researchers mount studies to try to find out what it costs to improve reading ability in third graders in some standardized unit, they find so much unexplained variation in the costs that they, too, raise more questions than answers.

But we don’t place the cost of making the value comparison on the consumer or the merchant in the grocery store. Instead, society as a whole picks up the cost by funding the creation and maintenance of consensus standard metrics. Until we take up the task of doing the same thing for intangible assets, we cannot expect human, social, and natural capital markets to obtain the efficiencies we take for granted in markets for tangible assets and property.

References

Cooper, G., & Humphry, S. M. (2010). The ontological distinction between units and entities. Synthese, pp. DOI 10.1007/s11229-010-9832-1.

NIST. (2009, 20 July). Outputs and outcomes of NIST laboratory research. Available: http://www.nist.gov/director/planning/studies.cfm (Accessed 1 March 2011).

Stenner, A. J., & Stone, M. (2003). Item specification vs. item banking. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 17(3), 929-30 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt173a.htm].

Williamson, G. L. (2008). A text readability continuum for postsecondary readiness. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(4), 602-632.

Wright, B. D. (1989). Rasch model from counting right answers: Raw scores as sufficient statistics. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 3(2), 62 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt32e.htm].

Wright, B. D. (1992, Summer). Scores are not measures. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 6(1), 208 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt61n.htm].

Wright, B. D. (1993). Thinking with raw scores. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 7(2), 299-300 [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt72r.htm].

Wright, B. D. (1999). Common sense for measurement. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 13(3), 704-5  [http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt133h.htm].

Tags: Business, capital, capitalism, commerce, coordination, economy, Education, human capital, infrastructure, instrument calibration, market efficiency, markets, Meaning, measurement, metric system, metrics, metrology, performance metrics, reinventing capitalism, science, social capital, standards, wisdom of crowds