Il buon senso nell’uso dei numeri nelle scale di valutazione. Alcuni esempi in ambito biomedico e geologico

Numbers have always been used to evaluate and measure a wide range of situations, both qualitative and quantitative, and consequently, they help us make decisions and choices. However, they are not always used correctly: it’s one thing for a scale to use numbers to represent quantities, such as the numbers we learned to count with as children, but it’s quite another to simply use numbers to indicate an order. In this manuscript, starting with medical and geological examples, we will examine some fundamental properties of numbers, so that we can use rating scales critically. In this regard, we would like to offer ideas for showing students practical and interdisciplinary applications of the correct use of mathematics.