From: ph36@unixg.ubc.ca (Richard Nistuk)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: The PV equation
Date: 11 Nov 1992 02:09:15 GMT
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: unixg.ubc.ca
Summary: What does it mean?

	If I am "flogging a dead horse" please forgive me.  But I have 
"glommed" onto an equation cited in summary of part 1 of "Dianetics:
A Handbook of Dianetics(R) Procedure"; Bridge Publications:1991;
written by the late great L Ron Hubbard.  

==========================================================

		PV=I*D^x :What does it Really Mean?

	Richard Nistuk

ABSTRACT:
	In previous posts on this fascinating equation much
      information on this equation has been uncovered.  With
      the much appreciated help of Gisle Hannemyr, a summary 
      of what we have learned so far is presented and a list
      questions which we would like answered is posed.





INTRODUCTION:

  Thanks to Gisle, a large portion of the summary has been done for
me.  As well, Gisle has provided a much nicer discussion of units
than I presented in my previous posting, but I digress.  Here
is a summary of what we have learned so far:
 
In article <GISLE.92Nov10000102@gyda.ifi.uio.no> gisle@ifi.uio.no 
(Gisle Hannemyr) writes:
>
>		      PV=I*D^x
>
>      where:
>	 PV = potential value of an individual or group
>	 I  = intelligence (presumably IQ)
>	 D  = the "Dynamic".  This is a number between 1 and 4
>	      indicating where the individual are within 4 "dynamics".
>	 x  = the magnitude on which the person is surviving on the
>	      dynamic, it is a number between 1 and 10


SOME PROBLEMS NOTICED

    Note: There seem to be many.  Please add any that I have missed!


_units of measurment_
	there doesn't seem to be any that apply to the equation!


_I_
	nobody wants to say how to measure this, presumably it is 
	measured by some I.Q. test.

_D_, _x_
	these seem to be unmeasurable, they are not well defined.

_Range of x_
	Gisle gives a nice example of this problem:

He assumes that we have two people A and B for whom we'd like to
calculate potential value.  His example, where he gracefully
ignores the little unit problem, is reproduced below:

>Both are nice, caring persons so I'll set both their Dynamics (D) to
>3. I'll estimate that the magnitude person A is surviving on the
>dynamic (x) to 8, while person B is doing slightly worse, amd score 6.
>Now, person A is an absolute moron, and his IQ equals 70, while person
>B is a genious that matches John Holifield's 156 IQ points:
>
>    So we have:
>
>              Person A   Person B
>          I:        70        156
>          D:         3          3
>          x:         8          6
>     and computing PV=I*D^x :
>         PV:    459270     113724
>
>So -- it looks like the "Potential Value" of the guy with an IQ in the
>70'ies is more than FOUR TIMES that of the guy with an IQ in the
>genius range.  That's probably the political correct thing to believe
>these days, but I guess that the moron will have a darn hard time
>realizing that incredible potential to the extent that he actually
>becomes four times as sucessful as the genious.

	What Gisle has highlighted, with this example, is the HUGE
dependance that the equation has on x.  If D has a range of 1 to 4 and
x has a range of 1 to 10 then D^x has a range of 1 to 4^10=1048576.
Surely something is wrong here.



QUESTIONS

	The questions that I asked in my origional post on this
seem to have been lost in subsequent postings.  I repost them here
with the hope that serious attemps to answer them are made.  
Posturings of the type Mr. Hardman and I were involved in are 
obviously not productive.  So, my lesson learned, I repost them 
in a manner that I hope is clear and unambiguous.


1.  How is _PV_ measured directly?  By this I mean what "instrument"
    do you hook up to someone to get a value for _PV_.

2.  How is _I_ measured?

3.  How is _D_ measured?

4.  How is _x_ measured?

5.  What are the units of measurement of _PV_, _I_, _D_, and _x_?

Questions 6,7,8 & 9 assume that a large body of statistical
data has been aquired, and in answering these questions you must
at least say how many test subjects were used.  Ideally a detailed 
description of the experiment and the data is preffered:

6.  What are the minimum, maximum, mean and most probable values
    of _P_?

7.  What are the minimum, maximum, mean and most probable values
    of _I_?

8.  What are the minimum, maximum, mean and most probable values
    of _D_?

9.  What are the minimum, maximum, mean and most probable values
    of _x?_

10. Can you provide examples of applications of this equation?
    If yes, please do so, but provide explanations of the 
    values that you choose.  Note: you can make stuff up here
    but it needs to be realistic.

11. Can you email experimental data to me?  The data should come with
    a description, thumbnail if need be, of the experiment, and the
    data shold be in a format that Microsoft Excell can read.




CONCLUSION

     The best way to find out if something, a belief, a science, a
religion, etc., is "well founded" is to look at the roots of that 
belief or science, its foundations.  This has been shown by Einstein
and Feynman for the field of physics.  It seems to me that Scientology
could stand a good examination of its roots.  The equation PV=I*D^x
seems an excellent place to start.

    What could be better?  It provides a common ground for scientologist
and scientist alike.  We (scientists) look at the equation and say "A-HA!
its got letters and an equal sign!  We can work with it!  We've seen this
type of thing before!".   Scientologists see a way to help themselves
understand the mind.  We can all get together on this one and see if
it REALLY works, hell, we (scientists) may even suggest a few changes
to make it more practical.  Scientologists may even convince a few of
us that Scientology isn't all that bad. 



  
>- gisle hannemyr  (Norsk Regnesentral)

Richard Nistuk    4th year physics student at U.B.C.
ph36@unixg.ubc.ca     (soon nistuk@unixg.ubc.ca)


p.s. I hope you meant "priceless" Gisle :)
     Also the word "out-gradient" is attributed to Jonathon.