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MARCH 1976 GT3 measures of distortion used by the writers. The phenomena vary with building size, type of construction, quality of construction, foundation type, and so on. One piece of evidence for this is the fact, pointed out by the writers , that distress does not usually occur where the differential settlements are the greatest. It is, therefore, useful and rewarding to examine in detail the behavior of individual buildings to understand the mechanisms involved in their performance. However, such detailed data are seldom available for a large number of structures, and variability local conditions would certainly require a great increase in the number of parameters needed to interpret them. The parameters used by the writers do provide a simple and reasonably accurate description of the behavior of buildings over a wide range of conditions. Indeed, it is surprising to the writers that the proposals of Skempton and MacDonald remain essentially valid so many years later, even when extended to a much broader class of buildings than they originally used. Bally's discussion presents a useful example of the use of different but similar parameters. The writers agree completely with his point that prediction of differential settlement is essentially a statistical problem that should be treated probabilistically. It is to be hoped that more work will be done along this line .

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