# Scope and format of system and world data sheets **URL:** \ **Category:** Flat Black\ **Created:** [1 March 2019 08:42 UTC](https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/scope-and-format-of-system-and-world-data-sheets/364 "2019-03-01T08:42:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 8
**Author:** ![Agemegos](https://discussion.tekeli.li/user_avatar/discussion.tekeli.li/agemegos/32/15077_2.png) [@Agemegos](https://discussion.tekeli.li/u/Agemegos)\ **Post date:** [27 September 2019 02:22 UTC](https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/scope-and-format-of-system-and-world-data-sheets/364/8 "2019-09-27T02:22:15Z")
The question arose in the thread about Navabharata as to what the “equality” rating means. The answer is that I am using one minus the Gini coefficient (of household income per household member) > [@Β Hydri VI: "Navabharata"](https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/hydri-vi-navabharata/482/18): > > “Equality” is one minus the Gini coefficient of household income per household member after taxes and transfers. A value of 0 would represent an infinitesimal proportion of people getting all the income, and 1 would represent everyone having the same income. 0.32 is a very small value: the most unequal countries on Earth these days have values of about 0.38, and those are very undeveloped countries in Africa, in the South Africa to Botswana range. It is strictly an economic measure, hence its p… The rationale is there is a convention (now going out of fashion) of using that as a conversion factor to turn GDP per head into “standard of living” for international comparisons. The problem is that it’s completely obscure. For anyone except some economists you have to define the Gini coefficient, and though I know how it is defined it really doesn’t communicate anything even to me. So, what are the alternatives? - A 10% Rich/Poor ratio? (e.g. the income of the richest 10% in Australia is about 12.5 times that of the poorest 10%. The corresponding figure for Denmark is 8.1, for the USA 18.5, for South Africa 33.1 and for Bolivia 93.1). - A figure for X% of households earn 100-X % of all income? (50% earn 50% at perfect equality, 0% earn 100% at perfect inequality.) @whswhs suggests a scale of 0–6 of qualitative descriptions set out in a key, like “Control Rating” in _GURPS_. I’m going to have to think about whether to provide a scale of equality or of inequality, and have a care to write the descriptions so as to indicate inequality _per se_ and not the material misery of the poor etc. > [@Β Hydri VI: "Navabharata"](https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/hydri-vi-navabharata/482/21): > > Well, eyeballing it might easily be as accurate as most game mechanical approaches. What I kind of would like now is maybe something akin to the GURPS CR system, with “equality” scores from 0 to 6, and sketches of the resulting societies. So for example ER 4 would be a country like the United States. Of course the extremes would be more Platonic ideals than actual social patterns: a godking served by a vast army of destitute servants, or a hivelike communism, maybe. (Though you could turn the … 0–6 seems like a strange range to me. I would naturally think more of a scale of zero to ten, or of no stars to five stars. I could be done in a text document like this: ★★★☆ And then I had a really ditzy idea. Emoji! Tau Ceti could be: 🥴☹😐😐😐😐😀👨‍🦳👴🧐 Navabharata could be: 😡🥺🥺🥺☹☹☹😐😀🤡 What could convery more than that? It only emoji didn’t look all alike. --- _[View the full topic](https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/scope-and-format-of-system-and-world-data-sheets/364)._