Vectoring

The resultant is the sum of its constituent vectors; it is the statically equivalent result of what would happen if all vectors were applied individually to a body. More generally, the resultant is the final product of the application of a function to a set of data.

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What a statement that is! I have been researching the results of various schools and how they are reported in public documentation. I think that, quite often, the most commonly applied function is called 'spin'.

Essentially, the function spin transforms a set of data describing a negative trend into one that can look positive when viewed from the direction of the spin. This effect is not scalable; if the magnitude of the negative trend is very great, spin provides for very minimal difference. However, the effect of spin also magnifies the value of the largest positive trend. Since the function centres on such a value, it is entirely possible for spin to make things look better.

A careful look at spin shows that there must be some sort of critical point beyond which, no matter how much spin is applied, everything looks bad. A more careful look shows that since spin destroys information, applying an inverse spin function will not recover the original data. This means that you need to keep the original data if you want to see what existed before spin was applied. If you spin something enough, nobody will know how bad things really were.

Of course, it does not always suit some people to keep the original data. I have seen, in my time, the most outrageous misdirections being used so that bad results will appear good and good results will appear bad. Thank goodness I always keep the original data so that I can check my second-order (or greater) results.