A NOTE ON THE COEFFICIENT OF PROFILE SIMILARITY.

The article presents information on the coefficient of profile similarity. Since the second paper on this statistical quantity was published, several psychologists have asked the author to rationalize a procedure which permits the use of all the segments, including segments of zero slope. This note attempts to do just that. Whenever zero slope segments occur in the reference or compared profiles it will be given either a positive or a negative slope. The determination of the appropriate sign is made by reference to some chance operation. The implicit assumption here is that when zero slope segments occur, a very large sample of segments taken from the same individual or group would yield equal -relative frequencies for positive and negative slopes.