The Personal Equation

Sounds like a "fuzzy set." Which comes into play when you try to categorize things that vary continuously into discrete groups. Can't be done without ambiguruity and bias. As a geneficist by the name of Pearl demonstrated when he had 15 scienfists sort the same 532 com kernels into yellow-starchy, yellow-sweet, white-starchy or whitesweet groupings. Each scientist came up with a different count. Instead of objectivity. Pearl discovered "personal equation," the slight nuance in perception each of us brings to observation. We may like to think of com crosses—and kinds of play—as distinct fi*om one another, but nature is more complicated than that.

Michele Root-Bernstein, Inventing Imaginary Worlds, From Childhood Play to Adult Creativity Across the Arts and Sciences (2014)

• perception