Live Session Agenda

A typical Week 5 agenda:

  1. 05 min: Lobby
  2. 25 min: Main Meeting: Anderson (2008) & Centola and Baronchelli (2015)
  3. 25 min: Breakouts: Burton (2008) & Kuhn (1962)
  4. 25 min: Big Idea #1: Pairwise Peer Review
  5. 05 min: Next Week On, RDADAs of Our Lives…

2 Main Meeting: Anderson (2008) & Centola and Baronchelli (2015)

Anderson (2008)
  1. What do you think George Box meant by the term “model”? What is the meaning of the phrase, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”?
  2. Anderson claims that Google doesn’t use models to extract value from data. What does Google do with data instead?
  3. Do you agree with Anderson?
    • Should science become more like industry, i.e. should the sciences stop doing what Box did and start doing what Google does?
    • What are the advantages or disadvantages of making such a transition?
Centola and Baronchelli (2015)

Don’t worry too much about understanding the methods; you may skim the technical parts. Instead:

  1. What are the authors’ stated objectives?
  2. How do they transition from the “problem” more broadly to the “research question” in a narrower sense?
  3. What image of reality do they suggest is true and how might it differ from common sense?

3 Breakouts: Burton (2008) & Kuhn (1962)

Red and Green Teams
Burton (2008)
Text map [@burton2008].^[Horizontal bars in a text map represent the relative character length of main sections of a digitized version of the text. Subsections are represented by diamonds.]

Figure 16: Text map (Burton 2008).4

  1. Which anecdote or story do you like best and why? What do you take away from the example?
    • The kite (p. 5)
    • Blindsight (p. 8)
    • Challenger (p. 9)
    • The cult (p. 12)
    • Creationism (p. 13)
    • Placebo effect (p. 14)
    • Cotard’s syndrome (p. 15)
  2. Why does Burton describe “knowing” as a “feeling” process rather than a “thought” process?
  3. What happens if evidence, perception, or experience contradicts the feeling of knowing?
  4. Is the “feeling of knowing” more related to Kahneman’s system 1 or system 2?
Blue and Purple Teams
Kuhn (1962)
Text map [@kuhn1962].

Figure 17: Text map (Kuhn 1962).

  1. What are the meanings of the term “paradigm”?
    • What is the Oxford English Dictionary definition?
      • What is the etymology?
      • Use Berkeley VPN or the library proxy server to access OED (a great resource).
    • What is the pop culture meaning of it, how do people use it in everyday conversation?
    • What does Kuhn mean by it?
  2. What does Kuhn mean when he says that two paradigms are “incommensurable”?
  3. How does Kuhn describe the “conversion” between paradigms?
    • How does this relate to generational conflict in science (or organizations)?
  4. Do you agree with Kuhn?
    • Do you think a “paradigm shift” always entails a “crisis” or a “revolution”?

Implications

  1. What does the term “science” in “data science” refer to?
  2. Is “data science”
    • merely a rebranding of “analytics” or “business intelligence”
    • or is it something different, or nearer to academic science?
  3. Is the “feeling of knowing” more of a roadblock or more of an opportunity for a data scientist trying to make an impact in her organization?
  4. Is the “incommensurability of paradigms” more of a roadblock or more of an opportunity?
  5. Describe one way a lesson or idea from this week would inform or change the way you approach your work.

readings (links) & lectures ～ assignments due

Bibliography

Anderson, Chris. 2008. “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete WIRED,” June. https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/.

Centola, Damon, and Andrea Baronchelli. 2015. “The Spontaneous Emergence of Conventions: An Experimental Study of Cultural Evolution.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (7): 1989–94. doi:10.1073/pnas.1418838112.

Burton, Robert Alan. 2008. On Being Certain : Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2008. https://www.study.net/r_mat.asp?mat_id=50222973&Crs_ID=30124014&check=passed.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. “Chapter XII: The Resolution of Revolutions.” In Structure of Scientific Revolutions (9780226458083), 144. https://www.study.net/r_mat.asp?mat_id=50222972&Crs_ID=30124014&check=passed.

  1. Horizontal bars in a text map represent the relative character length of main sections of a digitized version of the text. Subsections are represented by diamonds.↩