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On a scale of 1 to 10… June 20, 2016

My opinion of 1 to 10 ratings scales is extremely low, since I can very rarely figure out what the ends actually represent. With something like “Please rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10”, shouldn’t the pain at 10, by definition, be nearly unimaginable? Even if they say that a broken bone is x, that doesn’t help much if you’ve never had one.

So I was rather surprised to realize that I could conceive of a 1 to 10 rating scale for mosquito intensity or density. On the low end, there are zero mosquitos. On the high end, there are so many mosquitos that you suffocate, either because they physically block your airways or the swelling from internal mosquito bites blocks them. I suspect that level of intensity is biologically impossible, but it is imaginable. After a little more thought, I also realized that I think this scale is logarithmic, with 1 corresponding to 10 or fewer mosquitos in the vicinity, 2 corresponding to 10 to 100 mosquitos, etc.

I’d say we’re currently between 1.5 and 2 on the mosquito scale. I suspect the high 2s or low 3s is when a face net becomes an absolute necessity. If nothing else, saying the mosquitos are only a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 does make them seem more tolerable.

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much sense does that make?