This indeterminacy might be regarded as a kind of essential incompleteness in our description of a physical system. Notice however, that the indeterminacy as stated above only applies to values of measurements not to the quantum state. For example, in the spin 1/2 example discussed above, the system can be prepared in the state ψ by using measurement of σ 1 as a filter that retains only those particles such that σ 1 yields +1. By the von Neumann (so-called) postulates, immediately after the measurement the system is assuredly in the state ψ.