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

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

From Time Magazine Archive

The personal equation is apt to be decisive in South America.

From Prowling about Panama by Miller, George A.

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 Hill, J. Arthur

The trouble could not be connected with personal equation, the anomalies remaining when the observations of the four observers who took part were separately treated.

From Astronomical Discovery by Turner, Herbert Hall