Where does ogive collide?

In statistics, an ogive is the cumulative frequency curve of a distribution: the running total of observations plotted against value, producing the characteristic elongated S-shape from which medians, quartiles, and percentiles can be read off. Galton's 1875 Statistics by intercomparison, with remarks on the law of frequency of error introduced this cumulative construction and borrowed the architectural word for its sweeping profile. The referent is a graphical summary of a distribution's cumulative counts, and it is a wholly different thing from the nose of a shell or the bands on a glacier, tied to them only by the shared S- or arch-like shape the word originally named.[1]

Unit

Cumulative frequency (or proportion) plotted against the variable's value

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Constructed by accumulating class frequencies and plotting the running totals against upper class boundaries

In glaciology, ogives are the arcuate light-and-dark bands that sweep down a glacier below an icefall, each pair of bands recording one year's passage of ice through the fall as faster summer flow and slower, snowier winter flow leave alternating texture and colour. Goodsell, Hambrey, and Glasser's 2002 Formation of band ogives and associated structures at Bas Glacier d'Arolla, Valais, Switzerland links the banding to the strain and ablation history of the ice. The referent is a periodic surface structure in flowing ice, measured as wavelength and offset per year, and it is unrelated to a statistical curve or a projectile's nose beyond the common bowed shape that gave all three the name.[2]

Unit

The down-glacier wavelength and curvature of the banding, one band-pair per year

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Mapped from the spacing, curvature, and colour contrast of successive bands below an icefall and their annual flow rate