INFORMATION THEORY AND THE MEASUREMENT OF DETECTIVE PERFORMANCE Available to Purchase

The traditional measure of detective performance is the clear‐up rate. Though this has the merit of being easy to calculate, it is not without certain disadvantages. At present, a detective may take great pains with work generally considered to be of a high standard only to find that his efforts are reflected by no change in the clear‐up rate—or even by a decrease in the clear‐up rate. This paper shows how concepts drawn from information theory may be used as the basis of a measure that does not suffer from such inconsistencies.