Today is World Metrology Day 2016. From the World Metrology Day website:
The theme for World Metrology Day 2016 is ‘Measurements in a Dynamic World’. The topic was chosen to align with the increasing rapid pace of change in measurement science, and indeed of the world around us.
Metrology plays a central role in scientific discovery and innovation, industrial manufacturing and international trade, in improving the quality of life and in protecting the global environment.
World Metrology Day is an annual celebration of the signature of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875 by representatives of seventeen nations. The Convention set the framework for global collaboration in the science of measurement and in its industrial, commercial and societal applications. The original aim of the Metre Convention – the world-wide uniformity of measurement – remains as important today as it was in 1875.
The World Metrology Day project is realized jointly by the BIPM and the OIML. We hope that you enjoy this site and that your Country or Metrology Organization will join us and participate in this year’s event.
Warm regards,
Metrology and metrosophy, the science and philosophy of standards, are fascinatingly important for how they impact, shape, and inform our activities, and for interrogating the standards that we take as given in all aspects of our lives, personal and professional, and society. I’m interested in our standards of assessment for digital-always-as-public scholarship, and for larger questions of how we undertake assessment activities in support of broader impacts for our work and more engaged communities. I’m interested in standards overall as well (sewers, water, systems are always critical, and exciting!).
I’m also always interested in how we best support speculative practices, exploratory practices, and assessment with the needs for as-optimal-as-possible accuracy (in addition to precision). Evaluative practices can be placed in opposition to speculative, imaginative, and exploratory, but they can also be in parallel and complementary. For the complementary benefits of evaluative practices, more discussions of precision (very precise, but are they accurate, realistic, or simply precise?) and accuracy (realistic, valid, consistent, reliable, verifiable?) are needed. I hope World Metrology Day helps us to celebrate and embrace our standards and our work in interrogating and improving standards!