Statistics and numbers

Thirtieth on this list is la ponderazione, the weighting, and its English relative has walked away from the scales. Both go back to Latin pondus, a weight, itself built on pendere, to hang, because the Roman way of weighing a thing was to hang it from a balance. Italian kept the object. Ponderare is what a statistician does when some answers are made to count for more than others, and la media ponderata, the first entry on this page, is the result; un giudizio ponderato exists too, but the picture of the scales is never far away. English took the same root and kept only the picture. To « ponder » is to turn something over in the mind and never to attach a number to it, and « ponderous » has drifted further still, to whatever is heavy and slow on its feet. There is no ordinary English noun « ponderation »; what this entry names is a « weighting », built on the plain « weigh ». So a reader who meets ponderare i dati and thinks of reflection has the right root and the wrong hand: one language is holding a balance, the other a thought.