154 A BIOMETRIC STUDY OF BASAL METABOLISM IN MAN. 



may be regarded as due to uncontrollable experimental error and hence 

 not be considered as invalidating the generalization that heat-produc- 

 tion per square meter of body-surface is a constant. 



While only the physiologist can determine the amount of variation 

 allowable in the measures of heat-production per kilogram of body- 

 weight or per square meter of body-surface, the statistician may furnish 

 certain criteria of value in formulating the decisions. While the statis- 

 tician as such can not pass judgment upon the question of the degree 

 of consistency in a set of constants which must be demanded if they 

 are to be regarded as the expression of a biological law, he can furnish 

 absolute criteria of the degree of consistency. What is really needed, 

 first of all, is a measure of the closeness of interdependence of the total 

 calories of heat produced by an individual, under the selected standard 

 conditions for measuring basal metabolism, and the other character- 

 istics of the individual with which metabolism may be reasonably 

 assumed to be bound up. 



TABLE 53. Comparison of correlation between body-weight and total heat-production with 

 the correlations between body-surface by the two formulas and total heat-production. 



We now turn to a consideration of the problem of the selection of a 

 suitable measure of the degree of interdependence between the physical 

 character and metabolism. Following the discussion in the preceding 

 chapter, we shall first consider the coefficient of correlation. 7 * 



If the direct measures of metabolism are far more closely correlated 

 with body-surface than with any other physical measurements, it seems 



72 After the manuscript for this volume was practically completed a paper by Armsby, Fries, 

 and Braman (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1918, 4, p. 1 ; Journ. Agric. Research, 1918, 13, p. 43) appeared 

 in which the method of correlation here employed was used. 



