There is, however, a large body of literature devoted to developing an understanding of the relative significance of induction and field effects by analyzing related compounds in an attempt to quantify each effect based on the present substituents and molecular geometry.[1][12][13][14][15] For example, the three compounds to the right, all octanes, differ only in the number of linkers between the electron withdrawing group X and an acidic functional group, which are approximately the same spatial distance apart in each compound.[11] It is known that an electron-withdrawing substituent will decrease the pKa of a given proton (i.e. increase the acidity) inductively.[7] If induction was the dominant effect in these compounds, acidity should increase linearly with the number of available inductive pathways (linkers).