@abstractmethod<EOL><INDENT>def getMetric(self):<DEDENT>
``stats`` is expected to contain further information relevant to the given 
metric, for example the number of timesteps represented in the current 
measurement. All stats are implementation defined, and ``stats`` can be 
``None``.

:returns: (dict) representing data from the metric
   ::

       {value : <current measurement>, "stats" : {<stat> : <value> ...}}