Short answers, pulled from the story.
Anthropometry is the systematic measurement of the physical properties of the human body, primarily body size and shape. It is used in industrial design, clothing design, ergonomics, architecture, forensics, epidemiology, and medical anthropology to optimize products and diagnose conditions like malnutrition.
The tallest recorded individual is Robert Wadlow and the shortest is Chandra Bahadur Dangi. For weight, Lucia Zarate weighed 4.7 pounds and Jon Brower Minnoch weighed 1,400 pounds. Population weight averages range from 109.3 pounds in Bangladesh to 192.7 pounds in Micronesia.
Anthropometry has been misused to provide rationales for eugenics and overtly racist social movements. Phrenology, the discredited pseudoscience claiming skull shape revealed personality and mental capacity, was one of its most notable misapplications.
CAESAR, the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource Project, began in 1997 as a partnership between the US Air Force, NATO, and SAE International. It collected body measurements from 2,400 North American and 2,000 European civilians aged 18-65, with 80 anatomical landmarks and over 100 standardized measurements recorded per person.
Forensic anthropologists use skeletal measurements to build a biological profile that can help identify the deceased in legal settings. They use the Fordisc program to interpret craniofacial measurements for ancestry determination, analyzing features such as nasal cavity shape and palate form.
The SizeUK survey, conducted in 2001 as the largest sizing survey to that date using three-dimensional body scanners, found that British women had become taller and heavier since 1951, with average female weight rising from 62 to 65 kilograms over that period.