to an exception. We may presume then that the curves are of the lop-sided character indicated by the accompanying diagram." The same facts are also ascertained in respect to place variations as distinguished from time variations. To these may be added some statistics of my own, referring to the heights of the barometer taken at the same hour on more than 4000 successive days (v. Nature, Sept. 2, 1887). So far as these go they show a marked asymmetry of arrangement.
In fact it appears to me that this want of symmetry ought to be looked for in all cases in which the phenomena under measurement are of a 'one-sided' character; in the sense that they are measured on one side only of a certain fixed point from which their possibility is supposed to start. For not only is it impossible for them to fall below this point: long before they reach it the influence of its proximity is felt in enhancing the difficulty and importance of the same amount of absolute difference.
Look at a table of statures, for instance, with a mean value of 69 inches. A diminution of three feet (were this possible) is much more influential,—counts for much more, in every sense of the term,—than an addition of the same amount; for the former does not double the mean, while the latter more than halves it. Revert to an illustration. If a vast number of petty influencing circumstances of the kind already described were to act upon a swinging pendulum we should expect the deflections in each direction to display symmetry; but if they were to act upon a spring we should not expect such a result. Any phenomena of which the latter is the more appropriate illustration can hardly be expected to range themselves with symmetry about a mean[1].
- ↑ It must be admitted that experience has not yet (I believe) shown this symmetry in respect of heights.
