On one level, I can understand the need of some people to be able to quantify something like misery with a number. Not that it helps them do anything with it, mind you, other than being able to think, "Well, at least I'm not as miserable as I was back in XYZ..."
Here's the (supposedly) relevant formula:
Dr Arnalls’ formula is 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.
Key - W: Weather. D: Debt. d: Money due in January pay. T: Time since Christmas. Q: Time since failed quit attempt. M: General motivational levels. NA: The need to take action.
Now, what I wanted to do was plug things into the formula, just for kicks. However, as you may've noticed if you looked at it, there are a lot of variables that are unworkable without an understanding of their normal range.Take, for instance W (weather). What's the range for weather? Is a sunny day a 1? A 10? How about if it's cloudy, but not raining or snowing? How about taking the first letter from the word for the given weather and converting it into its equivalent number? (Cloudy would be 3, on that scale, for instance.)
Debt and money due in pay in January are easy, and it's probably safe to assume that the formula wants time since Christmas in days, as well as time since failed quit attempt. But how are we supposed to turn general motivational levels and the need to take action into numeric values?
I suppose the rest of us will have to rely on more seat-of-the-pants calculations... And by those calcs, I'm feelin' pretty good.
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