nmm 22 4500 ICPSR06046 MiAaI m f a u cr mn mmmmuuuu 130620s1994 miu f a eng d (MiAaI)ICPSR06046 MiAaI MiAaI Numerical Meanings of Probabilistic Expressions [electronic resource] Frederick Mosteller , Cleo Youtz 2006-01-12 Ann Arbor, Mich. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor] 1994 ICPSR 6046 Numeric Title from ICPSR DDI metadata of 2013-06-20. AVAILABLE. This study is freely available to ICPSR member institutions. Also available as downloadable files. These data were collected to obtain a clearer understanding of the quantitative meanings that people perceive in common words used to describe probabilistic outcomes. For example, in everyday language, people apply the expressions "always" and "certain" to events that occur in fewer than 100 percent of their opportunities. In this study, science writers were surveyed and asked to quantify, in a percentage term, their understanding of each of 52 expressions. They were also asked to indicate how they thought their readers would quantify each term, giving both an upper and lower limit they thought their readers would set for each expression. One group of expressions included the word "probability", and ranged from "very high probability" to "very low probability". Another used various forms of the word "probable", such as "very probable" and "improbable". Other expressions were centered around the word "chance": "better than even chance" to "less than even chance". The survey also included words like "always", "often", "frequently", "never", and "sometimes". Also tested were expressions with regularly used modifiers such as "very", or negation (not, un-, im-, in-), so that the effect of such modifiers could be evaluated. The sample of respondents was split to permit assessment of the effects of order of presentation: half received a form that ranked the expressions within 15 groups from high probability to low, while the other half received a form ordering the expressions from low probability to high. Cf.: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06046.v1 language icpsr language study icpsr perceptions icpsr ICPSR VI.A. Elites and Leadership, United States Mosteller, Frederick Youtz, Cleo Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. ICPSR (Series) Access restricted ; authentication may be required: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06046.v1