MEASUREMENT RESULTS OF SOME ANTHROPOMETRIC ATTRIBUTES ATTAINED USING THE ACTIVE EXPERIMENT METHOD

Abstract

The historical development of science has been marked by a characteristic methodological progression occurring in stages: starting with the so-called descriptive stage, followed by attempts to make systematic conclusions based on pseudo-qualitative analyses and reaching the current stage which is characterized by mathematization of procedures which makes more thorough quantitative analyses coupled with qualitative studies aimed at gaining scientific insights and discovering scientific principles possible. The science dealing with principles in the field of physical education and sports, or anthropological kinesiology, also demonstrates a need for mathematization of procedures with the goal of attaining more comprehensive analyses, especially in relation to the study of basic human psychosomatic dimensions. Planning an active experiment is a procedure determining the number and conditions of tests to be conducted, both necessary and sufficient to carry out tasks with a desired accuracy. The following procedural guidelines are of importance: 1) a tendency to minimize the total number of tests, 2) simultaneously varying all variables which present a factor in the procedure using a special rule, or algorithm, 3) using a mathematical mechanism modeling several experimenter's tasks, 4) selecting a clear strategy which provides a basic solution after each series of tests. This paper gives an overview of some of the anthropometric measurements of 225 subjects aged 25-35. The main feature of this sample was that the selection of subjects was not made according to their psychomotor abilities, not their sex and age; the subjects were all in the stationary phase of development of not only the basic, but also the specific anthropological attributes. The paper presents a graphic overview of results using the active experiment method and displaying the interdependence of anthropometric attributes with a series of curves which represent an approximation of data for different combinations of parameters measured during the experiment. The points on the graph are the results of experimental measurements and the curves are the results predicted by the model. Good approximations and their values, as well as the values and relations between selected factors can be seen in the 8 graphs included in the paper. All the dependencies which show mean relative error below 5% (0.05) indicate a strong correlation between the observed attributes, and this also yields approximate functional dependencies. The resulting properties of anthropometric space had already been taken into consideration. The value of the dependent variable in relation to the independent variable is shown in a graph taking into account the number of measurements and the number of subjects. This gives us points whose distribution can be approximated with a line or a curve. Combinations of variables have been randomly selected in order to ensure the insights gained into the interrelatedness of variables of anthropometric space are as realistic as possible.