personal equation

American  

noun

1. the tendency to personal bias that accounts for variation in interpretation or approach and for which allowance must be made.

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personal equation British  

noun

1. the variation or error in observation or judgment caused by individual characteristics

2. the allowance made for such variation

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Etymology

Origin of personal equation

First recorded in 1835–45

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

personal equation

Relations between the U.S. and Europe are complicated by the personal equation.

From Time Magazine Archive

There are experimentalists, like Picasso, and those who, like Braque, discover their personal equation and go on repeating it.

From Time Magazine Archive

In order that the personal equation may be allowed for, the present writer begs to affirm that he writes as a sympathetic student though not an adherent.

From Psychical Miscellanea Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc. by J. Arthur Hill

The personal equation in that look silenced and startled Mrs. Crump.

From The Mesa Trail by H. Bedford-Jones

Every investigator necessarily has his personal equation or point of view.

From Following the Color Line an account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy by David Grayson