Practical Data Analysis with JMP®

Analysis Platforms—A First Descriptive Analysis

We have Michelson's data, so let's take a look at his measurements. As you peruse the list of values, you might notice that they vary. Variation is so typical as to be almost invisible, but the very fact that they vary is what leads us to analyze them. Think about it. Michelson was measuring something that we now think of as a constant: the speed of light. In his day, the idea that light travels at a constant speed was not universally accepted, and what's more he and his contemporaries did not know the value of that constant. Hence, he was trying to measure this unknown constant. His instrumentation was imperfect, and he couldn't look up the correct value in the back of his physics textbook.