WHAT IS MEASUREMENT? THE CONCEPT OVER TIME

From its origins, man needed to compare objects or events (number of animals to trade, seasons, temperature, etc.). His first result was the creation of the concept of number.

After this conceptualization, in the act of comparison, man was able to distinguish differences between the properties of objects. For example: if what you want to compare is the length of two threads, you can say "this is longer or shorter than this other". But these expressions do not allow us to specify too much. A more precise expression is "the first corresponds to twice the second".

An important act in history was when man realized that to compare two objects he could do it indirectly through a third object used as a standard measure or unit of measure. This would solve the fact of being able to compare things that are not in the same place, for example, as long as we can take the unit of measurement with one. As we know, when talking about length, the first units of measurement were the foot, thumb, arm, etc., of which we still keep the name in the English measurement system.

This fact allowed objectivity to be introduced into the act of comparing. Its literal meaning is "interpersonal agreement". If the observations can be quantified in some way, expressed in terms of values, it is possible that the communication avoids interference of the particularity of each individual. In this way, both in everyday life and in Any work that requires objectivity and precision, arises how you can quantify or give numerical values ​​to what you are observing, that is, how to measure what you are observing. Having the measurements, you can compare the resulting values ​​and draw conclusions. Measurements allow descriptions to be communicated to others in a concrete and objective manner.

A definition of measurement could be:

Measurement is an assignment of numbers to objects or events according to established rules.

The unit of measure will be chosen depending on what we want to measure, since we can measure a lot of different properties: length, weight, volume, speed, time...