Cartoon Worlds

This morning I talked about models and "cartoon worlds" -- in the sense that a good cartoon can capture someone's essential characteristics without being accurate in all details.

Think about the work that Jessica Muhlin described. Why was building a "cartoon world" of the interaction between the reproductive cycle of seaweed and the effects of the coastal geography an important step?

What is the connection, if any, between this "cartoon world" and the much classier notion of a hypothesis?

-- Bill

Inference and Description

I thought that the work that you all did today was really rich, excellent stuff.

Part of what made it so rich was that it opened up so many issues and questions that are worth thinking more about. And, indirectly, Sarah, Jessica, Ken, and I were pushing you to the edges of some of those questions. A good example was when, tonight, Ken wanted to know what one group's hypothesis was and when he wouldn't settle for an answer that didn't have a firm hypothesis.

What's that all about? Why the focus on a hypothesis rather than just finding some stuff out?

One distinction that I have consistently found to be useful is between "description" and "inference." In statistics we talk about "descriptive statistics" and "inferential statistics." What is the difference? Is one a better thing to do than the other?

Think about the research that Jessica described with the oranges. She had some pretty low return rates for some of the orange releases. In some cases she had only one orange found in a particular location. What does a result like that show? What can you conclude from it? What are the limitations? What does this have to do with inference and description?

-- Bill

Fucus vesiculosus

Jessica Muhlin is not the only researcher at Acadia working with seaweed. Here is a link to a brief article describing some Acadia research by Dr. Jeremy Long about ways that the same rockweed that Jessica is studying actually develops defense mechanisms to defend itself against grazing by snails. Very interesting stuff. This is FYI -- no comment necessary -- but welcome, of course.

-- Bill