Real-world categorizers create unequal, nonlinear categories rather than evenly spaced ones.

Evidence

If categorization followed the default linear approach then the “obvious” thing would be to divide the indicator into three to five evenly spaced categories. If the World Bank followed the linear rule it would divide the GNI per capita range into four equal categories. If it did so then the semantic transformation would be linear. When scholars, states, IGOs, NGOs create two or more categories, they often do so in nonlinear ways. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 708

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘Nobody actually divides the world into equal bins’ — survey how World Bank, Polity, militaries all silently impose nonlinear thresholds, and why the linear default is a methodological fiction.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s own earlier discussion of scaling (chapter 5) and to the quantitative-vs-semantic gap flagged in 707.