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Making a Paradigmatic Convention Normal: Entrenching Means and Variances as Statistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Martin H. Krieger
Martin H. Krieger
Affiliation:
School of Urban Planning and DevelopmentUniversity of Southern California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

Most lay users of statistics think in terms of means (averages), variances or the square of the standard deviation, and Gaussians or bell-shaped curves. Such conventions are entrenched by statistical practice, by deep mathematical theorems from probability, and by theorizing in the various natural and social sciences. I am not claiming that the particular conventions (here, the statistics) we adopt are arbitrary. Entrenchment can be rational without its being as well categorical (excluding all other alternatives), even if that entrenchment claims also to provide for categoricity. 1 provide a detailed description of how a science is “normal” and conventionalized. A characteristic feature of this entrenchment of conventions by practice, theorems, and theorizing, is its highly technical form, the canonizing work enabled by apparently formal and esoteric mathematical means.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , Winter 1996 , pp. 487 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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