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.
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.
Warren Sanderson, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York); Sergei Scherbov, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) et Simone Ghislandi, Bocconi University
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.
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.