Digital BW, The Print

Wendel White's promotion of civility on the list is very welcome to me.

Wendel's e-mail address intrigued me, so I visited his web site

http://blacktowns.org/

and found a nicely-done site about his interesting project 
documenting small-town African-American life in Southern New Jersey 
with B&W photos. Made me wish I could see the associated Noyes museum 
exhibit in New Brunswick (without traveling 3000 miles to do it).

As for Marc's take on Wilhelm, despite Wilhelm still being "AWOL" as 
far as we (if not his clients?), are concerned, Wilhelm still has a 
lot of credibility with me. I do wish his (and RIT's) clients would 
publish more of the results of their testing. Maybe even _before_ 
they start to sell the products tested!

Marc is right about Wilhelm's 54-year and other preliminary "point" 
estimates: they are misleadingly precise. And I wish Wilhelm would 
report them as the midpoints of ranges which are two standard 
deviations wide. But if for some reason he can't, I'd rather have 54 
than, say, 50, along with the inaccuracy associated with rounding 
error. Of course, the 54 itself is presumably the rounded-off average 
of an appropriately-large number of samples - but I wish we knew how 
many.

Wilhelm's clients might, however, think - largely with good reason I 
suspect - that, unlike me, most consumers of Wilhelm's data have 
little appetite for statistics, know that estimates are estimates, 
and make allowances for that. And since Wilhelm's clients - not we - 
are paying for the work, who am I to complain? Well, I am _their_ 
client. So I feel entitled to complain - but about what those clients 
do (mostly don't do) rather than about what Wilhelm does for them, 
which I expect is done to a relatively high standard. I think we 
should focus our criticism on his clients' marketing.

Sam McCandless             samcc@...


> > From: Marc McCarron <mamccarron@...>
> > Reply-To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> > Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 01:28:56 -0500
> > To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [Digital BW] Wilhelm Imaging Research
> >
> > Screw Wilhelm Imaging Research.
> > What credibility does Wilhelm have with his no show on the Web for the last
> > 2 years ?
> > 54 years for Semigloss? why so inexact? can't he give us the days and hours
> > while he's at it?
> > Vilhelm, ve need someone else to lead the vay.
>
>Here is another way to look at this issue. I usually just say 'thank you'
>when someone gives me something for free (whether it is information or a
>nice piece of pie) and if I don't like it, I just quietly through it away.
>
>Wendel