Brand Spectrometer · measurement vocabulary
Plain-language definitions for the terms the instrument puts in front of you — framed by what they mean on your readout, not in the theory. For the full conceptual glossary, see the Spectral Brand Theory glossary.
One reading off one public signal — a single artifact (a review, a post, a press piece) read once, across all eight dimensions at once. It is the instrument's raw unit; an audience's line is built by aggregating many reflections, never by profiling any person.
The group of signals that stay together across all eight filters — a pattern in the full picture, not a demographic segment. You set how finely to group them.
The instrument's full saved output for one brand and one dated window: every audience line, its intervals, the noise floors, and the list of signals behind it. A published atlas re-derives byte-for-byte from open code and data.
The shaded band from the lowest to the highest audience on a dimension — the size of the disagreement between audiences.
Which way an audience leans on a dimension: the dot slides from −1 (negative, left) to +1 (positive, right). Strength is the line's height; valence is the dot.
How far a reading would move for reasons other than the audience — measured two ways: the operator floor (read the same signals with a different model pair) and the source floor (drop some signals and resample). A difference only counts if it clears the larger floor.
An audience gap divided by the noise floor. Above 2 it is resolved; 1–2 is marginal; below 1 is sub-resolution — reported as "can't tell," never as a finding.
The across-time cousin of the operator floor: how far readings move when only the model version changes. Measured by re-reading a frozen, byte-identical panel of signals across model versions (the PRISM-T measurement). A change between two dated readings counts as brand movement only if it clears this floor too, not just the operator floor.
The stamp that says which model-version era a reading was taken in, together with the version floor measured for that era. Epoch-stamped readings let a later reader ask "did the brand move, or did the model change?" — and get a measured answer instead of a guess.
How similar two audiences are in shape across the eight bands. Two audiences can share a shape yet still differ in magnitude — which a distribution-level test can still resolve.
Comparing two audiences as whole clouds, not just their averages — it recovers magnitude differences a shape-only reading misses. A pair is called apart only when three checks agree: a corrected permutation test, signal-to-noise above 1, and above-chance classification.
Emission unit vs measurement unit: a brand emits signals; the instrument records reflections (a signal read through one artifact). They are distinct — see the full glossary for both.
Where these words appear
Every term above is drawn, not just defined: the reading guide walks the detail dial from one number to the full instrument, and the tool itself opens with a real worked example you can explore straight away.