Paired Comparisons of Color Differences

A group of 11 observers judged total color differences between a number of pairs of Munsell colors. The analysis of the judgments made for each observer and the group was carried out by three statistical methods, the Scheffé method, the Morrissey–Gulliksen matrix method and the modified Thurstone–Mosteller method. The three methods give essentially the same results, but the Scheffé method is preferred because it allows a more detailed treatment of the observational data. Some order and orientation effects arising from the manner of presentation of the color pairs were found to be significant. The relationship between the judgments and their statistical estimates for different rating scales is investigated and a nonlinear relation is found to hold for the case where the rating scale is too coarse for the given set of color samples.