Zach Weinersmith
Not a Spring OnionFor the Body-Mass-Index (BMI), it took only 190 years to get to step 5:
Janelle Shane@wakame @ZachWeinersmith I was just thinking of the BMI on this one!
Fits the bill all the way to the ad hoc Victorian beginnings (Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet was trying to find the average human, and based it on French and Scottish men)
@janellecshane @ZachWeinersmith
And it makes sense as a simple rule-of-thumb when you want to check your male soldier-apprentices of roughly the same age for who should be looked over more closely by a doctor.
But otherwise, BMI is more of a test for who approximates a quadratic mattress best.