The Korea Department of Transportation plans on building a new high-speed train. The train would run at speeds between 240-300 km/h, at such high speeds, passenger comfort is a major concern. Han, Jung, Jung, Kwanhk and Park (1998) were asked to provide quantitative data to demonstrate passenger preferences for several interior design alternatives in high-speed trains. The Korean government wanted quantitative data that could be used to make engineering trade-off choices. For example, when trying to decide what features to place in a train, budget must be considered and some features may be chosen over others. To make trade-off choices you need quantitative data that says feature A is preferred by a specified amount to feature B. Han et al (1998) decided that the best way to obtain such quantitative data would be through magnitude estimation. Han et al. had subjects perform magnitude estimations in eight different experimental conditions. Two variables were manipulated to form the eight experimental conditions, seat direction and activity. Seat direction was either forwards (in the same direction as the movement of the train) or backwards (in the opposite direction to the movement of the train). The activities tested in each seat condition were relaxing, listening to music, watching videos and reading. Each experimental condition took place in a stimulated train environment in which the subject sat. For each condition, the subject provided his/her preference by stating like or dislike, by providing a number and by a drawing a line that corresponded to his/her preference. The results? Subjects preferred sitting in forwards seat while listening to music nine times more than sitting in the backwards seat while relaxing. However, preference for sitting in the backward seat while listening to music was similar to sitting in the forwards seat while relaxing. The implications? To achieve passenger comfort, the high-speed train should be equipped with swiveling seats so that the passenger is always sitting in the same direction as the movement and/or should provide activities such as listening to music to increase passenger comfort.

Boakes (1995, as cited by Allard 2001) was a co-op student at the University of Waterloo. Boakes had a co-op term with a company whose purpose was to evaluate the condition of highways. One method used to evaluate road condition was to have employees ride in a van on a highway of interest and rate the condition of the road every few seconds. These ratings were based on video images of the road projected from video cameras attached to the van. Boakes wondered whether judgements of the road conditions made via video images of the road would differ from judgements made via a direct view. How was Boakes to investigate this proposition? A pretty simple way, which he wisely chose, was to have experienced road raters perform magnitude estimations of simulated road cracks from both a direct view and from a video view. His results? It turns out that these expert road raters were just as good rating simulated road cracks from video images as they were from a direct view.