150 years ago, the world agreed to a shared language of measurement. It still holds us together, even when everything else seems to pull us apart.
Articles on Measurement
Displaying all articles
Math is more than memorizing times tables and doing homework problems. It is woven into more aspects of your life than you might think.
Some time measurements, like months and years, use the movements of the moon and sun, respectively. But other time measurements, like the hour, aren’t clearly connected to astronomical phenomena.
An asteroid ‘the size of 33 armadillos’ might be a flight of fancy, but real astronomers measure celestial objects with units that are just as strange.
Amid the global threats posed by climate change, spiralling energy costs, insecure employment and widening inequality, the need to rethink our notion of progress is now an urgent priority.
It’s hard to get accurate measurements, but a nationwide network of more than 8,000 volunteers with rulers and specific standards reports after every storm.
A look at the many systems of measurement that have been lost and changed throughout history.
Measurement and standards are at the heart of how we trade commodities and measure wealth. So what happens now that the planet’s most critical standard has been completely overhauled?
Today marks one of the biggest shake-ups in the history of measurement. But the new standards on how we define units of mass, length, time and so on are not easy to explain.
How useful is the information you get from the measure of any thing? That depends on what you chose measure in the first place, and that’s not always clear.
The international prototype kilogram keeps changing weight so scientists have come up with a new way to calculate.
Most researchers use the UN’s Human Development Index to measure each country’s progress, but that system has flaws. A new, simplified index aims to do it better.
Economists, politicians and the media watch GDP closely. But it isn’t the best way to measure the health of the US economy.
Driverless cars and drones will require pinpoint location accuracy, which means our methods for measuring the Earth’s centre need an overhaul.
The Australian Census has been taken since 1911. But is it still necessary in today’s world of mass digital data collection?
For a long time the way we measure what is going on in our economy and society has distorted our actions. We’re now building a more holistic way of measuring progress.
If you’re into business and finance there are myriad numbers you can look at. But PMI is one of the better ones if you really want to know where an economy is going.
It’s really hard to measure snowfall accurately. The National Weather Service relies on more than 8,000 volunteers with rulers.
Top contributors
-
Associate Teaching Professor of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science and Manager of the Joel N. Myers Weather Center, Penn State
-
Demographer, POLIS Centre for Social Policy Research, Australian National University
-
Professor of Economics, emeritus, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
-
Professor and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Data Science, AI and Modelling, University of Hull
-
Professor of Economics, Fordham University
-
Geodesist, University of Tasmania
-
Director of the International Laboratory of Demography and Human Capital, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
-
Professor, Finance, The University of Western Australia
-
Associate Professor of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University
-
Doctor of Philosophy in Sustainable Futures, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
-
Postdoctoral Researcher in Radio Astronomy, University of Sydney
-
Visiting Professor in Statistics, Imperial College London
-
Professor of Sustainable Development and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), University of Surrey
-
Professor and Dean, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Manitoba
-
Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry, UNSW