Measuring the Human System

The last few days have been instructive in a lot of ways ..I learnt not to be overconfident .. and that its hardwork not just brains that count..:)Learnt to appreciate criticism learnt how to pick up the pieces and start afresh ..
And the funny part was all this happened while i was trying to investigate human performance ..!!
I learnt that it is impossible to take the "human" part out of the performance.With a human being you are never sure what 2 + 2 will add up to be .. and predictions often fall flat on the face regarding systems where the human element is neglected.
the cricket final .. pakistan had no business losing ..but .. the human element .. the last shot .. the lure of glory .. the dramatic finish of a boundary .. the mathematics dont work .. its the human who upsets the applecart .
when measuring human performance we can use
physiological measures .. like
1.the changes in heart rate.
2.change in blink rates of the eye ..
3.the brain evoked potentials ..
4.the change in electrical conductivity in the skin


Or we can use the fall in performance itself .. but then it would not actually reflect what is the strategy that the person is using to cope with the workload .. not would it give any idea about the various components of the task which are producing the stress.

A logical idea would be to ask the guy how is he doing ..??
even this has its problems as it isnt objective ofcourse and the personality of the guy ..his motivation levels .. his willingness to be truthful about his stress levels would all come into play .

The answer probably lies somewhere in an amalgamation of all these philosophies of measurement whereby a composite picture may be obtained about human performance.

Sound nice .. but a seemingly obvious thing like measuring the heart rate changes .. or technically Heart Rate Variability entails converting a time domain measure .. in beats per minute to frequency domain measure by Fourier Transformation.. and then plotting the rate of change of the change in heart rate..!!!and then at different frequency components the area under the curve with frequency in one axis and amplitude in a logarithmic scale in the other we finally measure the heart rate variability ..

Duh ...what the hell .. everyone knows that the heartbeat goes up when we are under stress..!!! thats true .. but science lies in being able to measure and classify everything and express it in numbers ..not and easy task when you are dealing with humans ..
How much do you love your child ..??
if you cant classify and measure it .. does it not exist in scientific terms ..???
Are there some areas beyond the purview of science or is it just that science hasnt matured to a level where it is possible to turn the scientific eye inwards and look at ourselves with an ability to understand.
Can a machine understand itself ..??
But then is man a machine ..??