Finally, I conclude that the usage of nPVI in music research should be limited to specific methodologically justified contexts. I argue that abstract mathematical measures ought to be avoided in preference for more concrete empirical descriptions of specific rhythmic features, and that, rather than focusing on a single measure, multiple measures ought to be used. Specifically, counting the proportion of successive IOIs that are identical accounts for as much as 98% of variation in nPVIs in musical corpora.

I argue that that simpler mathematical characterizations, which are more musically intuitive, can capture the same useful information as the nPVI. My principle criticism regards the application of a linear average (the nPVI) to categorical data (rhythmic notation). I discuss the known qualitative features of the nPVI and illustrate the nPVI's fundamental features and assumptions through its application to a number of musical datasets. provides some common packages, including EndNote. In some cases, this involves downloading and installing the software on your own computer in other cases it involves running the software on a lab or other shared computer.

In this paper, I present a methodological criticism of the nPVI as applied to music. There are several ways to obtain software licensed by Georgia Tech or the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Patel and Daniele (2003a) introduced the nPVI to music research and it has since been used in a number of studies. T he normalized pairwise variability index (nPVI) is a measure originally used to compare the rhythms of languages.

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