bsmall2Apr 9, 2025
> How much is enough? While many consider this the most central existential question of our acquisitive age, it also underlies many real-world practical decisions that we must make...
> It also illustrates the omnipresent, existential issue “how much is #enough?” ..We could have gone further. When are you done? Doing exercises like this one helps to teach us the impor-tant lesson that, in any serious investigation, you are never done, youjust run out of time—obesa cantavit.*
#HowardWainer in _ #PicturingAnUncertainWorld _ sounds like 老子 LaoZi #知足 #足るを知る
bs2Mar 26, 2025
Rereading a print out of Howard Wainer's _Understanding Graphs and Tables_, it's what had me searching murder rates and El Salvador. Wainer writes key phrases I should remember: an "orienting attitude", a "redesign task must first try to develop and understanding of purpose..."
http://csis.pace.edu/~marchese/CS397Z/Midterm/wainer_table_design.pdf
#HowardWainer #TableDesign #DataPresentation #GraphsAndTables
Show threadbsmall2Mar 25, 2025
#HowardWainer's "The Most Dangerous Equation"^1s got me to Kelly's Equation. One page^2 linked to Wikipedia's "#HedonicTreadmill"^3. Researchers see Primo Levi's insight too!?
> The process of hedonic adaptation is often conceptualized as a treadmill, since no matter how hard one tries to gain an increase in happiness, one will remain in the same place. [Once their bellies are full]
^1 https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-most-dangerous-equation
^2 https://theory.stanford.edu/~blynn/pr/kelly.html
^3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
@[email protected]
#KellysEquation
The Most Dangerous Equation

Ignorance of how sample size affects statistical variation has created havoc for nearly a millennium

American Scientist
bsmall2Mar 24, 2025
> In the late 1990s the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began supporting small schools on a broad-ranging, intensive, national basis. By 2001, the Foundation had given grants to education projects totaling approximately $1.7 billion... There are many claims made about the advantages of smaller schools, but I will focus here on just one...
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-most-dangerous-equation
#HowardWainer #TheMostDangerousEquation #BillGates #GatesFail #deMoivresEquation #uspol
🧵
The Most Dangerous Equation

Ignorance of how sample size affects statistical variation has created havoc for nearly a millennium

American Scientist
bsmall2Oct 25, 2024

> The first rule of table construction is to:
> Order the rows and columns in a way that makes sense. We are almost never interested in “Austria First.”
...
> Round-a lot! This is so for three reasons:
> a. Humans cannot understand more than two digits very easily.
> b. We can almost never justify more than two digits of accuracy statistically.
> c. We almost never care about accuracy of more than two digits.

https://diasp.org/posts/12734726
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1176346
#HowardWainer #DataOrder

I have to print these visualizations out and take the time to see i...

I have to print these visualizations out and take the time to see if they are useful. maybe I can get a few people to look at them and see if they come up with any questions. My first impression is that it's helpful to have the row-based and column-based plots side by side. Maybe taking up so much space is hard to justify in a printed publication, but maybe the side-by-side view would work in a small group. Everyone gets a page to ponder and discuss. The screen probably distracts from free discussion, the screen probably privileges the preparer or speaker in a way that distracts from a free-and-equal give-and-take conversation... Wrestling with Minamata's important data table is giving me confidence with Racket. I feel like, with enough time and focus, I can create what I want with a table of data. This work(play?) has given me an opportunity to appreciate "functional programming" while using sort. Racket's sort lets me adhere to Howard Wainer's(fn:1) advice on table construction. I...

diaspora* social network
bs2Jun 20, 2023
> "Getting information from a table is like extracting sunlight from a cucumber."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1165236
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED387520.pdf
#HowardWainer quoting #FarquharAndFarquhar #Farquhar from 1891 #SunlightFromACucumber #DataTables
Show threadbs2Apr 17, 2022
> This table of fisheries data made it easy to appreciate functional programming with sort. You are free to create a function that will.. order.. the data. It's simple to adhere to Howard Wainer's rules for “table construction.”..
> The first rule of table construction is to:
1. Order the rows and columns in a way that makes sense. We are almost never interested in “Austria First.” #HowardWainer
https://write.as/bs2lr/minamata-fish-market-decline-1950-1956
#crab #crabs #racket #RacketPlot #DataVisualization #Minamata
Minamata Fish Market Decline 1950-1956

The visualizations might be ready to print out and think about. After putting a table of data into R-style, "long form" lists, Racket's...

bsmall2 Learning Racket
Show threadbs2Jul 4, 2019
More commentary on DrRacket Visualization work and Data Tables (with input from Howard Wainer)
https://ruhrspora.de/posts/2986945
#HowardWainer #Farquhar #DataTable
With plot-pict, pict->bitmap and send ~ save-file I can stay in DrR...

With plot-pict, pict->bitmap and send ~ save-file I can stay in DrRacket and avoid the shell with ImageMagick. There might be a smart mathematical way to keep track of the positions of plot-elements, but for now I just look for worthy-looking connections and get their coordinates in GIMP. If I can learn the pict library I might be able to generate line drawing for GDM (fn:2) language-learning materials. It's interesting to play with a problem, the data table, that has been around for a long time: from 1891.... In 2009 I did a survey of the use of data displays in a number of leading journals and found that, in all of the sciences that I surveyed, the dominant form of data display was the table. This is despite the century-old warning of the brothers Farquhar that: “Getting information from a table is like extracting sunbeams from a cucumber.” (fn:1) Harada水俣病p11 Original Table https://i.snap.as/34YqEWK.jpg The DataVisualization plot and pict code: - https://write.as/bs2lr/plot...

bs2Jun 30, 2019

Another Data Visualization for understanding Minamata and Learning Racket.

https://write.as/bs2lr/minamata-fish-market-decline-1950-1956

#DrRacket #Racket #RacketPlot #DataVisualization #DougHoyt #HowardWainer #Minamata #MasazumiHarada #原田正純 #水俣病 #漁業 #Fishery

Minamata Fish Market Decline 1950-1956

The visualizations might be ready to print out and think about. After putting a table of data into R-style, "long form" lists, Racket's...

bsmall2 Learning Racket