Nelson Reading

I feel like this ties in with when we talked about reading the lines, between the lines, or beyond the lines. I agree with Eamon, this would be a great reading as an introduction to the course and talking about the work that you and Nancy do. It is interesting to look at pedagogy as something that was at one time rejected by academia. As a student you are inclined to believe that teachers do things that are the best for their students but as it turns out they are just as susceptible to stubbornness and politics as the rest of us. I also like when Nelson talks about the transition between the second two modes and the acceptance of uncertainty and how that ties into preference. It is like that day in class when Basil talked about his theory of how the Rocky Mountains were formed, what he was saying seemed reasonable and based on other information he's given us and his profession I trust him so I was inclined to believe what he was saying which puts me in the "Baskin Robbins" mode of thinking on that particular issue. Even though it was not really his intent there was not too much comparison with other ideas (mostly because it was a tangent).

In that section he makes two other points I appreciated. Firstly, his point about carbon dating and how science is not trying to attack religion about its new earth ideas it is saying that no matter where those ideas come from they do not stand up to empirical evidence. And that wrong ideas sometimes have good uses. I was really interested in what he said about the surface of lakes (the meniscus?) and the curvature of the earth. They were just really interesting points to think about. 

In the second transition section I could see the benefit of discussing hypothesis testing and paradigm choice and mixing and how that applies to things we have previously learned in science classes and the information we are learning now. 

As I said before, I think this article would be interesting to read at the beginning of the semester it would sort of justify Nancy and your approach to the course and why you do some of the things you do. You could also refer to some of the parts throughout the course as they apply to what you are teaching. You could probably get away with just assigning the first part of the article but it's really not that hard nor long of a read so it wouldn't be too much of an issue to assign the whole thing. 

I really enjoyed the Nelson reading. I feel like it did a great job of giving some context to the objective(s) of a class like this. (Basil, this reading might be a really good thing to assign during the first week. That way, the class could begin with a discussion about the relationship between college courses, institutional authority, knowledge, etc.) I thought that the prose was very effective - clear, concise, and engaging - and that Nelson offered interesting generalizations from his analysis (e.g. most people graduate from college without having developed strong interdisciplinary critical thinking.). Claims like this have the potential to really resonate with current college students - after all, many of us are ready to take a critical stance with regard to our professors' instructional styles once we are offered a perspective that allows us to effectively evaluate the way that material is being presented.

In general, I felt that the first section of the article (where Nelson identifies the "problem(s)") was more effective than the latter parts (which are more solution-oriented). I say this because the second half of the essay felt a bit speculative, as though Nelson was comfortable drawing some fairly broad conclusions from limited examples. This is not to say that the second part would not contribute something to class discussions (it is always more difficult to be right than to be useful), simply that I was more impressed by Nelson in the first half.
Overall, great reading. I think it would add a lot to this course, especially if assigned at the beginning of the semester.
-Eamon

I felt that the article on visual data in science was reasonably well-done, and I actually think that it would have made for some good discussion in class. The idea that scientists (and people who are interested in scientific research or who bother to look at it) rely largely on visual renderings of data is something that seems obvious once it is pointed out, but is perhaps not a facet of the scientific project that is typically made subject to scrutiny. It becomes more and more apparent to me that scientific "knowledge" is constrained by the mediums thanks to which it is collected and disseminated - the visual tendency of data is no exception. I believe that human understanding is largely informed by our spacial/visual faculties. They occupy a very prominent position in our stream of sensory engagement - this arrangement applies beyond our sensory experience and suggests a parallel to our grapples with the conceptual and numerical. The problem is that numbers in data are not, metaphysically speaking, visual/spatial entities in any total sense. They can be represented visually as in graphs, topographical maps, etc. but one must take care to ensure that the visual constructs are set up in such a way that they do not incline the viewer toward a distorted understanding of the data. The visual mediums should be used, I would argue, but with a careful acknowledgment of their inherent limitations. (This is the point that I suspect could provoke a good debate.)
Eamon

Data: Using Graphs and Visual Data

OK, this is my shot at what we're supposed to be doing. I've only had a chance to read the first article but I don't want to read the rest yet in case this is not the type of response you are looking for. I've made this very informal and am using the blog as sort of a reflection area trying to answer Basil's question about what was more effective about reading the article online or what we did in class. Alright, here we go...

I think the article was a bit simplistic for our class. I liked the first chapters of Huff better. If I were to add some of this material to class I would definitely talk about the enormous numbers of graphs and diagrams found in scientific journals as well as in mass media (perhaps you could refer to the process of peer review here and scientific integrity) Following that I would ask the class what famous scientific drawings/graphs they can think of and if those were an effective way to keep the knowledge alive and vibrant (ie CO2 in Hawaii and DaVinci etc.) You could have a v. short discussion on the merit of diagrams and their ability to show data but most students would probably come to similar conclusions. I would then give them the graph of Monckton and other examples from the Huff book and ask them to look at why the data set is skewed. If they weren't reading Huff I would definitely tie in those examples as well. 

I've always wondered about satellite images but I feel like that info and the stuff about light was a little unnecessary. The article was fairly interesting but I think their approach overall was not as exciting and was a bit too simple for our class. 

That's all I've got. What do you think? 

So, as I understand things, we should be getting an email from either Basil or Nancy about the additional reading assignment for this week. After we all have a chance to look at it, we will post our responses here. Everybody on board?
-Eamon