Learning to Write for Research

The End of the Beginning

2005-12-01T09:32:00.000-05:00

Officially that was the last posting for this course (Univ Maryland DMGT720). However, I have learned a lot about the creative process of writing and the real power of hte mind to generate ideas when it is forced.

Freewriting is definitely something that I will use again in the future. As mentioned in a couple of the entries, I used frewriting to create a fast first draft of a chapter for the book Dynamic Modeling. Each chapter was written by a different author. Half of the authors did not meet the deadline for their manuscripts. Freewriting helped me be one of the half that did meet the deadline.

It has been a great learning experience.

What I Plan to Do

2005-12-01T09:30:00.000-05:00

So, now we know what I will read during the break. But what will I do? First, I plan to spend more time on my bicycle. The refreshing wind does not feel the same sitting behind my computer as it does on a bicycle the first thing in the morning. Second, I will actually spend more evenings with my family. I might even take my wife to dinner a couple of times. The Saturday after I return from the f2f class is my daughter’s birthday party. So I will be at a skating rink trying to manage 10 middle school girls. That will be a lot more fun than reading about data collection methods for qualitative research. Third, I plan to look around me and wonder … what should I do with my time? Because we spend so much time studying (10-20 hours per week), we tend to forget what it is that normal people do after work every day. I do not recover from that immediately. It takes so time before I stop sitting at my computer wondering why it is not ordering me to read or write.

Actually, one of the reasons I am in this program is that I enjoy learning new material more than most of the other things I could be doing (“most”, not “all”). So these breaks remind me that I really do get a lot out of what we are doing in the DM program and that it is a better choice than watching terrible TV (nearly all of it), cleaning the house, working the yard, mindless shopping, etc.

So I do not have a huge plan for what to DO over the break.

What I Plan to Read

2005-12-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

One of the toughest things about the DM program is that you are so busy doing homework and reading for homework that you really cannot read the things you like. I have collected a number of books through the semester that I plan to read over the 6 week break. I have more than I can get through – but that is part of the pleasure of it. Here are the books I am looking forward to right now:

1. Halo: The Fall of Reach. This is an SF novel that uses the Halo computer game as its theme. I started this because I am creating a seminar to teach to High School students and thought Halo would be a good theme for the presentation. Turns out the book is not too bad. There are 2 others in the series, but I am not sure I want more of the same armored heroes fighting evil alien hordes. Have you every wondered why an alien race who is much more powerful than us would be evil? Why not nice and helpful the way Earth people are represented in the movies? “They want our water!” is the common reply. Well, I am sure they could not have become advanced enough to travel through space without a plentiful supply of the raw materials to sustain life.

2. First In. This is the story of the CIA’s first moves into Afghanistan. It was recommended by an old government guy that I know. He said it is fascinating.

3. Seeing What’s Next. This is Clayton Christensen’s 3rd book on innovation. I read his material and turn that into conference presentations. In January I am speaking about the “Disruptive Influence of Game Technology” at the GAMES Synergy Summit. This will be the 4th conference presentation on disruptive technology. I have been able to place Christensen’s and other authors ideas into the context of the military simulation and computer gaming industry and everyone wants to hear those ideas at their conferences.

4. HBR on Innovation. This is a collection of old HBR articles on innovation. Many of these are “classics”. Also directed at my conference presentations.

5. The Harvey Girls. When we were visiting the Grand Canyon we learned the story of Fred Harvey establishing “Harvey Houses” across the west. This is the story of the girls who were hotel and kitchen staff in those hotels and how they tamed the west by marrying the wide cowboys and turning them into farmers and ranchers who would support a wife and children. There was also an old movie of the same name starring Judy Garland. We got that from NetFlix and watched it. It was good, fun, corny.

6. Harry Potter. I read an occasional Harry Potter book. The newest movie was so good, that I might want to read the book version of it.

That is all I have and certainly more than I can get through.

Bleeping Attitude

2005-11-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

So if I my bleeping attitude is programmed unconsciously by me, then I can reprogram it. That aligns with the ideas of Norman Vincent Peale and the horde of positive thinking people that followed him. It sounds like “unconscious” mental programming is only unconscious because we are too busy doing other things to notice that it is happening. It does not mean that it is beyond our reach, just currently beyond our attention.

Reprogramming first requires becoming aware of your attitude and then tracing that to the behaviors that are programming it. From there, I suspect that it is best to select replacement behaviors rather than forcing out existing behaviors and leaving a void.

This is where the bleeping movie might come in very handy. The metaphysical or paraphysical world that it describes (true or not) is an alternative to the concrete world we usually deal with. Reprogramming can be assisted by access to nontraditional ideas that force people to stop looking at the world from one point of view. That in itself is valuable in making change. If you cannot release your current ideas, opinions, and mores, then there is little room for change. In fact, your current state is a function of those very ideas. It might be that you have encapsulated a combination of these that can only lead to the kind of behavior you have right now. It might be impossible to change without changing the ingredients that you allow into your mind and body. This is an area where religious conversion is effective. It changes the ideas you allow into your head and it changes you daily practices. Therefore, it almost has to change your attitude and perspective. It is just like changing the ingredients in a soup, it has to taste different. Same for the metaphysical ideas from the bleeping movie.

What the bleep do we know

2005-11-30T07:57:00.000-05:00

I watched the movie “What the bleep do we know”. It was interesting and surprising. I work with a woman who is completely into all of these types of ideas and practices. She knew the movie instantly and had read books by many of the contributors. I am more skeptical. Many of the ideas are certainly true, but applied in a new light in the movie. Other ideas will require more verification.

Specific ideas that I caught were:
· The emotions and behaviors that you exhibit strengthen neural pathways in your brain. Therefore, repetition created your mental state. Getting out of a previous state (or rut) requires repeatedly behaving different until the old pathways weaken and new ones are strengthened. This is encouraging because it means that changing personality is possible, though not necessarily easy.
· Humans become dependent on a number of chemicals and practices to deal with stress. Reprogramming can also break those addictions and give you the opportunity to take on new behaviors (and probably new “good” dependencies or addictions).
· The idea of changing the structure of water by taping a word onto the bottom was highly questionable. I do not see any way that the water can be influenced by the pattern of ink on a piece of paper. For this to happen, it would mean that energy would have to be transferred from the person writing the label, stick to the ink, and then be transferred again to the water. I need a lot more convincing to believe this.

Finally, at the end they gave the credentials of the people who were interviewed. Many of these were very credible – notably professors from Stanford and Cornell. Two who were not so credible were the chiropractor from Atlanta and the woman who channeled wisdom from a spirit named Ramatha.

Web site

Freewriting in Greek - What does the mind do?

2005-11-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

When using the computer, does it matter whether the displayed text is in readable English or symbols – like Greek? Lets find out …

In thoeyr our freewrting is different if we hand write than if we type on a computer. Psychologically we process differently when we are hand writing than typing. I think that is true. Handwriting is a specialized form of artwork. It is "drawing characters", not just pecking them off of a keyboard. Wihout some reflection it is possible to elieve that there is no difference. But when you actually practice both you quickly notice a significant difference in what you mind is doing in the two cases.

So I wondered if it would make a difference to change to font to Greek symbols and write an entry. Certainly, I still have the keyboard to look at as I am doing right now. But, MS Word does not do spell chaeck in Greek. So there is no feedback that tells me to fix a speklling or grammar error. The Greek symbols also stop me from looking at the text on the screen and revising what I will say.

Having done just this short section in Greek, I can say that this form is unique from normal typing. Because you cannot read it, the words disappear into the computer and you just feep flowing. Once they are donn, it is very difficult to revise, because you cannot see what to go back and change. I have already noticd a number fo spelling errors that have slipped past too fast for me to corrent.

When writing the mind is doing an interesting combination of thinking, typing, reading, revising, and editing ... all at the same time. I suspect that typing or writing in the ....
Right there someone walked in and interrupted me. I cannot go back and look at what I was writing. If I don;t remember what word I was on, then I cannot continue the flow.

Freewriting in the dark (whether typing or handwriting) would be yet another modified mind/body process.

This was an intersting experiment. Must go now.

Freewriting Topics

2005-11-26T18:47:00.000-05:00

This assignment is supposed to do two things – (1) get us to realize and practice how freewriting can break a writers block and actually reveal buried and valuable thoughts in our own heads, and (2) allow us to explore ideas in research methods. For me, it has done #1 very well. I had not realized what a great cauldron of ideas was sitting on top of my neck. I thought it was just a good place to display a UM hat. However, it is has not been so successful at #2. During the first week of class we identified the 3 major methods of research – qualitative, quantitative, and mixed. Since then we have spent the semester circling these topics and adding more layers to them. However, I soon ran out of new topics to explore in this journal. I could have rewritten on the same topic after learning more. Also, many of the textbooks we are using are dead boring. They go on, and on, and on about simple ideas. I am now sold on the value of qualitative methods, but in spite of my experience with the texts. Those books (esp. Northcutt and Patton) make me think they have an inferior method and they have to write long and boringly about it to try to justify it. Thank heavens for Creswell and Punch. They really rescue qualitative methods from its own proponents. Reading papers that use a qualitative method has been must more valuable than reading books on the topic. It is clear that some questions have to be created first qualitatively before they can be proven quantitatively.

As I read the chapters in the textbooks, I am seldom struck by a really interesting or new idea. Too often I am lulled into boredom and just keep swimming until the end of the chapter. I must admit that when I get to my dissertation, I may find these books invaluable references – I that might just be a polite way of saying they stink … which they really do.

Thanksgiving Weekend - More Homework

2005-11-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

Most people look forward to the long Thanksgiving weekend so they can relax, overeat, watch football, and be with family. We did all of that too. But now that it is Friday, I am looking forward to 3 days with no work responsibilities … free time ... that I can use to finish the last 4 homework assignments for the Fall Semester.

1) Drake Case. I have a nice outline of ideas for this case. I plan to get a first draft of the text written today.
2) Statistics Project. I have been doing statistical analysis on my data set for a month. I can see the patterns that I want to pull out and the model that I want to make. But, I need some big block of time to organize and write that material down.
3) Statistics Assignment. There is one last assignment that is due in a week or so. Time to get the reading done for that and start on the problems. I think Denise has already done this one.
4) Freewriting Journal. While I was working in Canada, I fell behind in my journal by 3 days. I need to do those entries this weekend.
5) Drake Case Presentation. After I have the Drake Case written, I have to prepare a presentation for the class. This has to be done before I fly up there on Thursday night.
6) Statistics Project Presentation. I have to create a summary presentation on the statistics project for next Saturday. First I have to make it with Powerpoint, then convert to Impatica, then post on the 725 WebTycho site.

That’s all between now and the end of the semester. Oh, of course, that does not count the reading and posting to WebTycho sessions.

I think I will go back to bed.

Homework - Middle School vs. Doctoral Studies

2005-11-23T14:35:00.000-05:00

Over the holiday weekend there are two people in our house that have homework. My 12 year-old daughter has to create a science project. Hers requires a stand-up tri-fold project board, pictures, text, and a model of the water cycle. She has to search the Internet for pictures, write text about the water cycle, and build a clay model of the cycle. I am the other one. I have 5 or 6 assignments to start or finish this weekend. I have to research questions in management using books and papers from a digital library. However, I do not have to make anything from clay. So my hands will remain clear, but I won’t have anything to demonstrate in class on Dec 2nd.

Remember show and tell? You always had bring something to hold up – I have since learned that those are “tactiles”. Well, now that we are doctoral students it seems that we spend little time on tactiles. We don’t have time to mess with anything but documents and words. There is little time to apply what we have learned. Between semesters I often find an outlet for my new knowledge. My new understanding of Innovation and Change have become the topics for a number of conference presentations. I can hardly wait for the end of this semester when I can organize some of this into a series of presentations.

My daughter often throws a fit if her assignments are not going well or if they interfere with the rest of her life. Because she has parents there seems to be some reason that she can project that frustration onto us – it is own fault. But as an adult learner, it is difficult to direct my frustration outwardly. Whose fault is it that I have too much homework? Apparently my own, because I decided to sign up for these two classes. So I can only get sad or tired when the work gets heavy.

I think doctoral work would be much more rewarding if we had tactiles. We could build little office buildings with clay, popsicle sticks, and matches. Maybe we could collect bottle caps and make a mural of Jack Welch or Lee Iacocca. If that is too silly, then maybe we could create exercises in which we apply our new concepts to our own companies or to those in the news. Maybe we could attempt to solve GM’s current problem with sales, unions, and retiree benefits.

I am going to play with clay for awhile – the blue looks really nice.

Canadian vs. European Insecurity

2005-11-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

Though the Canadians I was working with wanted to be unique from Americans, they did not exhibit the national insecurity that comes from many Europeans. When workign with Europeans I often find that they are eager to point out that their country has invested something or has some social feature that is superior to the U.S. It is not sufficient that that feature be good, in their eyes there is some reason that it must be better than the U.S.

The strangest of these came from a Dutchman. He went into a little speech about why The Netherland’s money was superior to U.S. money. Their bills were printed in different colors and multiple sizes. Working will bills that were all green and all the same size was just inferior in his mind. Though this is certainly an area in which anyone could have a personal opinion, it is no basis upon which to measure the value of an entire country.

In Canada, an interview on television mentioned the color of their money being a distinguisher between the two countries.

In a recent conversation with a professor form Finland, he wanted me to see his Nokia telephone which was produced in Norway and emphasize that it was very advanced, but not yet available in the U.S. He also felt that he was doing research that was leading the world, especially the U.S.

Personally, I do not believe that I engage Europeans with a superior attitude. However, it would be very easy for me not to notice this bias in my speech. I assume that they are reacting to an image of the U.S. that they have built up over many years. Perhaps their media is projecting an arrogant image of the U.S. Certainly in International affairs the US behaves with a great deal of arrogance and disregard or the opinions of the rest of the world.

An American comedian performing in Canada may have said it best. He thanked them for their kindness because it was so rare to find anyone outside of the US that liked America right now.

Canadian Parliament

2005-11-21T14:29:00.000-05:00

I flew up to Canada early on Sunday so I could look about Ottawa, Canada’s capital. I spent most of my time in the Parliament area taking pictures of the buildings and the river area. Then I took the tour f Parliament and learned a little about their history. They were a British holding until 1867 when they negotiated a peaceful separation from the crown. However, they still feel a strong bond back to England. In their struggle to create an identity that is unique from that of American’s they have mixed British and American practices. In business, it feels almost identical to the U.S. However, they do only work 37.5 hours /week (7.5 hours/day) in order to avoid the very strict overtime laws that kick in when a person works over 40 hours/week.

Canadian money looks like European money, different colors and including social scenes and contemporary figures. The $5 has a picture of children playing hockey on the back. Their coins also have the Queen of England on them – something you would never see in America.

The food also has a British flavor – meaning little flavor. Most of the places I ate served food that was less flavorful than American. There were also no Mexican restaurants – which I think is a big opportunity. But, they are very big on donuts and coffee. The Tim Horton donut and coffee shops are everywhere, as dense as McDonald’s in America. There appeared to be a Tim Horton’s about every 5 miles.

I found that within one day I had picked up the Canadian language inflection. That means ending each sentence on a rising note and pausing for just a few seconds before starting the next sentence. This pattern almost naturally calls for an “eh” at the end of the sentence.

I am invited back in February when the temperature is 20 degrees below zero. They say it is the best time of the year with Winter Festivals running, ice sculpture, snow sculpture, and skating on the frozen canal. But you have to wear clothes that cover everything but your eyes.

Drake V

2005-11-17T07:15:00.000-05:00

This is a short case, but I wonder what the VC’s are up to? What do they expect from the company? How much oversight do they have over the way money is spent? How closely are they breathing down the necks of these new entrepreneurs?

VC’s can be a bloodthirsty band of vampires. They want the first blood of the new company when it starts flowing. They want their blood before even the founders get a deep drink. I would expect these investors to place their man in the company and on the governing board of the company. Bob, Dan, Chet, and David will find that they do not have all of the freedom they had hoped for. When they took the VC’s money they became accountable … controllable. They are going to find that to some degree they cannot call the shots around the office. Good or bad, right or wrong, they are going to have to dance to the tune of the investors. They are going to be forced into decisions and actions that they may not agree with and that they curse themselves for having to make. They will look in the mirror in the mirror some mornings and know deep in their hearts that they are good guys that want to do the right things for the employees … but they can’t … the VC’s won’t let them run free.

The good part about all of this is that the VC’s often have their own contacts that can help with PR, advertising, and manufacturing partnerships. They can bring the company into the limelight in ways that the company founders cannot. The VC’s may take a pint of blood, but they also use some of that for the good of the company. The Dallas VC’s sound benevolent. In the beginning when hopes are high and losses are low, it is easy to coast along and trust the founders. But when problems start to emerge and money disappears, suddenly performance becomes much more important than faith in the founders.

The company may be growing beneath the founders’ feet, but with VC’s it is also growing above their heads. They are back in the middle again.

Drake IV

2005-11-16T07:14:00.000-05:00

As the company opens it is completely unbalanced. There are 4 founders sharing control – Bob, CEO; Dan, VP of R&D; Chet, VP of Manufacturing; and David, VP of Marketing. Bob has 3 staff admin employees (Finance, Administration, and Personnel), Dan has the 15 employees from their other companies, and Chet and David are working alone. This is a purely R&D company right now. Everyone is slaving away to create a product with the VC funding they have received.

What is Chet doing in Mfg? He had better be working with fabricators in China, Taiwan, and Eastern Europe to get the parts for their computers made. He had better NOT be working to establish manufacturing here in the U.S. The rates will kill him. To make these relationships, he needs some help.

What is David doing in marketing? He has been visiting customers and university professors. That is great. But he had better also be working with advertising and PR firms to create a campaign that will introduce the new product to the world. Once the R&D guys have something, it will be time to turn on the machine that builds demand. The advertising and PR are mostly image and power based. They do not need to provide technical specs. They just need to make customers feel that the company has something that they need. The more they can generate this feeling of need, the better the product launch will be.

I wonder how much expertise these guys have at creating a new company. Introducing it to customers and making a presence in the market? Did they come from IBM where the name is known? Or did they have experience with a dot.com where they had to fight for attention?

Drake III

2005-11-15T07:12:00.000-05:00

I am shocked that Bob, the new CEO at Drake has so quickly turned to simplistic solutions and staff abuse. He seems to think that hiring his old coworkers and driving them 70 hours/week is the path to a new kind of culture. He is also disregarding the advice of his Personnel Director, a woman he hired specifically because she had experience creating a culture that he wanted. Bob has no experience building a culture. But he is certain that his off-the-cuff ideas will work. If people just work all the time and eat pizza and beer at the office, then the good culture will emerge. It is like growing yogurt or yeast. Bob thinks that work, pizza, and beer are the major ingredients. Those will create magic and something new and different will emerge.

Culture is a fascinating topic that we have explored in Schein and Katz. When studying it from the perspective of groups you begin to see that it comes from the many, not the one person. It takes and entire village to make a culture, but just one village idiot at the top to destroy it. Bob is the idiot at the top. He is doing to create a financially successful company. He is going to talk about how their culture is different. He is going to believe that his experience at the top is typical of the workers’ experiences at the bottom. Founders are always pleased with the companies they sit atop. They think that their creations are unique and different. But, in most cases, from the inside, the company is exactly like a thousand others. This is not because the founder does not want them to be different. I don’t think it is even because the founder has intentionally sacrificed culture for profits. Usually, the company is the same because it grew in the same business, government, and social environment that a thousand others grew in. The company absorbs its culture from that of the city and the employees. But also from the requirements for government reporting and meeting the needs of stakeholders like VC’s or stockholders. There are not an infinite number of ways to accomplish many of these tasks. So, the founders have to add a few small ingredients that can make a difference. They also have to withhold some ingredients that can ruin the recipe. Perhaps withholding ingredients is more important than what you put in.

Drake II

2005-11-14T07:10:00.000-05:00

So if it is true the a few people cannot change an entire culture alone, then how have people like Steve Jobs been able to create a significantly different kind of company? Jobs was lucky to enter an industry when it was new and emerging. So he had an opportunity to start from scratch. But, his own actions are just one part of a big machine. I think most of Apple’s differences come from what he encourages or allows or demands that people in the company do. It is their actions that make the culture. Jobs is just a public icon or mascot of that culture. What Jobs shows to the media and public may not be an accurate reflection of what exists inside the company. It is the image that sells Apple products.

Witness the iPod product. Did Jobs conceive this on his own? Did he design the controls? Did he select the white case and the marketing campaign? Did he pick the hard drive? No, he did none of these. Jobs probably demanded of his team that they come up with a new product that could dominate a market. He may have suggested that the MP3 market was totally fragments among vendors. From there, he just demanded that people come up with a better product that was different.

Where does the culture come from? It comes from the people inside. Jobs can point in a direction with a very behaviors. But, as important, is that he not take other actions that negate or make impossible the behavior that he is hoping for. Remember Fortress Insurance. They wanted new growth as long as they did not have to change anything they were doing.

Apple is now selling the video iPod. Was this a radical new invention? No, for several years there has been an emerging media player market. But, customers do not know what to do with such a device once they have one. Apple has a great product design in the iPod, now they have to give the customers video content so they know what to do with the new Video iPod. Music customers received help with content via iTunes. But they also had access to all of the legal and illegal music sharing services that had exploded in the years prior to the iPod’s release. Apple will create iVideo to provide content for the player. Notice that they have not created the Game iPod or iGames services. I think these do not fit with their user interface for iPod. Neither is their a huge repository of accessible content properties to tap into. This may come when all of the old console games are available as digital files for download.

Drake Case

2005-11-13T07:09:00.000-05:00

The Drake Case is so typical of new company start-ups. It begins with people who are not satisfied with their current jobs. They all get together and find solace with others who feel the same way and are sure that they can do better. So they set out to create the kind of company that “should” exist. They don’t want any of the bad characteristics of their current employer and are sure that a few simplistic principles will help them solve their problems.

However, once they start the company they discover several important lessons. First, they themselves have tutored in the ways of their former employers. Many of the situations they face are new to them and they have no experience except the last company. So they begin doing things the way their old employer did. Second, they underestimate the degree to which a company is former by the dynamics between the people. The company culture is not something that one person can force on a group. It is something that the group adopts in order to function. That adopted behavior is designed to allow people to function and deal with problems from their perspective. Third, the external business and social environment dictates many behaviors. Government regulations, financial reporting, work routines, and hundreds of other norms that are outside of the control of the founders come to play on the culture of the company.

The four founders of Drake may be able to avoid one or two mistakes at their former employers. They had better select the really important ones that have significant leverage. From these they are hoping to stimulate an organization in which the other employees will adapt other different behaviors. The CEO has already begun disrespecting and distrusting the person he hired to build the culture.

I suspect that the four founders do not really want a company that has a new culture for everyone, but just a new culture for themselves. Now they are the bosses, they set the rules, they get the attention, and they get the profits. The culture probably looks pretty good for them now, but everyone else may not be able to tell any difference.

Research Subjects

2005-11-11T19:31:00.000-05:00

Researchers are eager to get to the heart of a question. They need data to do this, often data collected from other humans that are not interested in the same subject. How does a researcher get these subjects to cooperate? What is their motivation? How do you insure that their responses are not contrived?

When the subjects are animals it is necessary to control them or to extend yourself. You must capture and control the range of the animals so that they will fall under observation or experimentation. Or you can become Diane Fossey or Jane Goodall and go out to the jungles and follow them about.

With humans this is more difficult. For one, each human often has a different daily path than his or her family or peers. We tend to have clusters of location and association that are specific to family, work, school, sports, service organizations, and hobbies. Therefore, a researcher is most likely to limit the study to one of these clusters. It simplifies the location of data collection and the set of people to be collected on. However, it also omits the external factors that impact the behavior when in those clusters. For example, my performance in this class is often impacted by the work travel schedule or the arrival of a hurricane. However, the professor cannot see these effects and in many cases, I do not think to mention them until after they have impacted my performance. If research were being conducted, then the data would have already been collected and adjustments would have to be made retroactively.

When your population of study comes from a social class that has little interest in or connection to research, what is their motivation for talking to you, or telling you the truth? Do you explain the grand contribution you will make to the world? Do you explain how important it is for you to finish the long path to a doctoral degree? Do you tell them you are a government rep who will make life easier if they take your survey? Do you agree to watch the children or bring sandwiches while they take the survey?

I accept that many people cooperate just because it is in their nature to cooperate or because they find it flattering to be listened to. I think these are the most powerful motivators. But, beyond these people, it can get very difficult to get research subjects who will give you good accurate information.

It is important to realize that your work is just one step forward in human knowledge. If you make mistakes, it can be forgiven as long as you provide some valuable piece of truth. Later researchers will catch your mistakes and use your truths to move forward another step. It is important to be honest and ethical in your research, because it will lay one foundation stone for future researchers.

Data Analysis

2005-11-10T16:18:00.000-05:00

Large amounts of data often have buried within them secret relationships, causality, and predictable events. We conduct data analysis in order to tease out this information. We search for the connections between variables that are thin, but where multiple relationships accrue toward something that is tangible and useful. In business, there may be relationships between advertising and sales, R&D and long-term profits, executive skills and market share. Academics search this data for one more undiscovered relationship. They need something new to be able to create a publishable journal paper.

But what happens when the data does not contain any relationships? What happens when all of the relationships and secrets have been uncovered? Then what? Does that branch of academia evaporate or redefine itself?

I am studying the Top 100 companies that invest in R&D in the US. I have plotted variable in 18 different pairs. Most of these graphs show no relationship within the data. If anything, it says, “large companies spend more that small companies” or “technology companies spend more than industrial companies”. This is not exactly revolutionary information. I think we could have guessed that. The next step is to divide the companies into different groups – like High Sales, High Capital, High R&D, Computer Technology, Biotech, Pharma, etc. This may allow us to see industry trends rather than country trends. Perhaps there is less commonality regarding R&D spending by country than there is R&D spending by industry.

This has been a good sounding board. I think that is something to pursue.

Data Entry

2005-11-09T20:19:00.000-05:00

When did data entry become a profession? In the 21st century, we really should have graduated beyond this lowly task. What data can be written down in a form that is beyond the ability of a computer eye to decode, but still within the abilities of a human eye. Scanners and OCR have come a long way, but not nearly far enough. I have to manually enter data for a 100 X 13 matrix of company financial data for DMGT725. That is crazy. Certainly, the data owners are within their rights to decline to provide the digital version of the data. But, HP should have long since created a scanner that will rip this data off of the paper and slap into a format that I specify. Where is this technology. Please save me from performing yet again a task that the lowest of literate people have been performing for centuries.

I should be able to slap that paper on my scanner, outline the text with a matrix of boxes, and command it to read the numbers and place them in a table or spreadsheet in that form. What is so hard about that? If I were still a programmer, I think I could write a program to do that myself.

1-800-Hewlett-Packard – “Hello this is me your customer base. Please invest a little money in saving me from this task. Thank you.”

So why am I entering this data manually? The S&P COMPUSTAT data is for sale if you want to buy it. The Industrial Research Institute buys the data and published a list of the Top 100 companies that invest in R&D. However, S&P will not allow them to release the digital version of the data. Of course, that makes perfect sense. I don’t expect anything different. But, I do expect HP to hear about this and create scanner software to serve me. I am their customer not S&P.

Epistemology

2005-11-08T20:18:00.000-05:00

There must be a hierarchy of need for knowledge. It must start at knowledge that you need to be able to do something that is important to you – like how to hunt for food or how to woo women. This is knowledge that has an immediate practical application.

Second, there must be preparatory knowledge. This is collecting knowledge that you have some good reason to believe that you will need in the future. This may be mastering a skill that is required to be promoted or learning something that can lead to certification.

Third, might be curious knowledge. This is knowledge that is interesting to collect. It provides pleasure to you for learning it, but there is not necessarily anything important to do with it. Knowledge gained from watching any random show in the History Channel might fall into this category. Seeing how the Boston Tunnel was built may never be useful, but it is sure interesting to watch the mess they get themselves into.

Fourth might be esteem knowledge. This is knowledge that is collected in an effort to impress your friends. If you are sports fan you may memorize sports statistics in order to impress fellow friends and fans.

Fifth. After collecting all of this knowledge you might start to think about why you collect this, how was it collected, and what knowledge that you possess can really be trusted. This is epistemology.

How many people make it all the way to #5? Very few are interested in going that far.

Quigong’s Hierarchy of Knowledge:
· Epistemology
· Esteem
· Curious
· Preparatory
· Need

Dissertation Inspiration

2005-11-07T07:02:00.000-05:00

How inspired am I to create a doctoral dissertation? On the one hand, it seems important to pursue a topic that I am really interested in and that can be used in my professional life. On the other hand, professors encourage us to pick a topic that we can complete, hinting that any finished topic is a good topic.

The latter is certainly true if the DM is just a credential to help you do something else. However, the former is important if the DM program is a structured learning process upon which to build a new step in a career. In this case the dissertation is the opportunity to establish expertise and credibility that can form the basis of a business. That is what many consultants emerging from Harvard and MIT have done. They pick a dissertation topic that can become a book, a new management fad, and a constant source of speaking and consulting engagements.

I am inspired to do something in the area of innovation and R&D management. I began wanting to understand the CTO position, which I held at a previous company. After much study, I understood the way the position was being used and how it contributed to the company. But, I also discovered that it was not a very significant position. The CTO has great thoughts and strategies. But for the most part he is a salesman. His job is to sell the company an investing in technology and to sell the customer base on the fact that the company is the best in this field. There is nothing wrong with that. It is an important part of the company. But, what he really contributes to strategy, market share, market valuation, and corporate direction seems to be minimal.

Take the example of Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Motorola. She really came up with the company’s vision statement “seamless mobility.” But those words had to be placed in the mouth of Ed Zander because he is the one getting the exposure in the media. He is the face of the company. In the first story on this new strategy, the magazine reported that Warrior had worked with Zander to create the mission during an airplane flight together. However, in subsequent reporting the idea was placed firmly in the mind and mouth of Zander and Warrior was forgotten.

The CTO position is still interesting. It requires interviews and analysis – qualitative analysis to do a current dissertation. This may reveal connections to financial positions or stock price that can be investigated later. But, currently we just do not know enough about the position to do a quantitative study that is meaningful.

The Homework Vine

2005-11-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

Dear Santa,
It is getting near Christmas. The thermometer has dropped to 70 degrees, the wind is blowing 5 mph, and people are wearing long-sleeve shirts. It is Fall in Florida. I am beginning think about what I want most for Christmas. Could it be a new BMW 6 series, an Alienware computer, or Xbox 360? No, I think I would just like a little rest from homework. It creeps through my life like a choking vine. It finds all of my free happy time and twists statistics problems and essays on methodology into those spaces. The relaxed novel reading and game playing is all gone.

The homework vine has small stems so that it can penetrate event the smallest cracks of free time. Once inside, it expands and splits open the schedule so that it can occupy at least 30 minutes, but sometimes up to 10 hours. I have sprayed the vine with apathy, but it always comes back. I have ripped it up and planted flowers of novels and the latest movie releases, but it springs back from the root within hours. That homework vine is tough.

I am looking forward to the cold weather of Christmas break when the vine will retreat and let the flowers bloom. I want to pick-up a book that at least one other normal person is reading as well.

Santa, this vine is tough. But, I hear that it blossoms into the most beautiful flowers and within 3-4 years produces a delicious fruit. Like a pineapple that takes 3 years to bear fruit, the homework vine has to work a long time to achieve its goal. I am sure the flowers and the fruit will be wonderful. But right now, I just want to homework vine to get out of all the cracks in my daily schedule.

Can you arrange that Santa?

Real World Model Building

2005-11-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

I have recently won a contract to build a cost and schedule prediction model for a government office. We are basing our work on the well-established COCOMO model that has been evolving for 25 years for estimating the cost and schedule of software development projects.

Data collection to drive our study is one of the biggest problems. Based on COCOMO and some other similar models we know that the typical number of variables that are included in these models is in the area of 20. Our research indicates that over the span of 20 years, the COCOMO researchers at USC have only collected 180-ish data points to build and validate their model.

Last night we had dinner with an MIT researcher who is building a variation called COSYSMO. So far, he has collected 42 data sets to drive his model with 18 variables.

If our own model has 18-20 variables, then we believe we would need about 80-100 data points to arrive at some decent confidence level.

At the outset we are expecting to work with about 5 data points.

How can we possibly build a model with 18 variables from only 5 data sets? We must rely heavily on the work that has been done before. As we change or add variables, we must keep our eye on the fact that any changes are exchanging a value that has move validity than the one we are adding.

Luckily, this class has helped me appreciate the situation we are in. It is too soon to say much about how hard this is going to be.

IBM Casual Day

2005-10-31T15:59:00.000-05:00

In 1994 I began working with IBM in Northern Virginia. In that geographic area, it is customary to wear a dress shirt and tie to work every day. At IBM, it was the same – along with a preference for white shirts and red ties. For many IBM people (technical, not sales) they also chose to wear suits to work on a typical day. After working with them for several days, they mentioned that I would be at their campus on Friday, which was “dress down day”. They were all allowed to choose to dress more casually on Friday. Being from a small company about 5 miles from their campus, I thought this was overly stringent. At our facility, each of use chose what to wear and there was great variety among the staff. But, it was one small consolation that they could relax on Friday.

I showed up at their campus on Friday – casual day. Sure enough, everyone was dressed down. Our main contact was wearing a nice polo shirt, a pair of docker pants, and slip-on loafers. As we walked around the offices, I noticed other people dressed similarly. In fact they were dressed identically to our host. Everyone was wearing the polo-docker-loafer combination. Even on dress down day they all had to wear the same uniform of casual clothes.

I joked with our host about this and he did not find it funny at all. He felt that it would not do at all for people to wear just anything on dress down day. He thought standardized dress down was the best idea.

No one was wearing a t-shirt, blue jeans, sneakers, flannel shirt, boots, or any other variation. The conformance of middle and high school had carried into the office and held its iron standards there as well.

Future Homemakers of America

2005-10-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

My wife and I were talking about our high school experiences and mentioned clubs like 4-H, FFA, and FHA. Where does the Future Homemakers of America (FHA) fit in today’s world. In the 1970’s it meant teaching young women to sew, cook, do crafts, shop for groceries, and handle all of the domestic chores that have traditionally been assigned to women. In the 21st century, how to you run an organization like that? You don’t. It can’t still exist. So I got on the Internet and searched for FHA. I found a curious site called FHAHERO that contained the Future Community Leaders of America. A little research at Britannica led me to understand that FHA had transformed itself into an organization for community leaders. They take men and women and teach responsibility and leadership.

On the web site you will still find the people wearing the red blazers that they were known for in the 1970’s. Those are ugly, but they are a connection to the past. It is good to see an organization that has been a part of the lives of generations of Americans to find a new niche to keep on working with people.

Google was not done yet. It also showed me that Laurie Graham had written a novel called Future Homemakers of America. It looks like a history piece on the lives of women in WWII.

http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9324107
http://www.fhahero.org/ (FCCLA) Future Homemakers of America-Home Economics Related Occupations
http://www.lauriegraham.com/ (A Novel)

(Hmmm ... that was really all I could come up with on this topic. I thought there might be more ideas there.)

Modeling Approach

2005-10-28T14:06:00.000-04:00

[NOTE: Freewriting first draft for the "Military Modeling" chapter of the upcoming book, Dynamic Modeling, edited by Paul Fishwick, to be published by CRC Press in 2006.]

In the previous section we discussed many patterns of relationships that exist between multiple models and talked in very general terms about what would be represented in those models. However, we did not explore specific mathematic or logical algorithms that would be used in those models. In practice, the number of techniques, algorithms, and equations that are used in military models is close to uncountable. It is not possible to describe all of them or even those that might be considered “the best”. So many different problems are studied with military models that there is no “best” approach that can applied universally when representing a specific vehicle, human, or unit. However, the techniques that are used do fall into distinct categories. In this section we will discuss four categories of modeling dynamics that are often used in military simulation systems.

Physics

Physics-based models are most often found in engineering and virtual simulation systems. For example, a missile pursuing a target would be represented by the physics of motion, momentum, mass, and aerodynamics. Changes in the fin positions would drive aerodynamic equations and change the vector of the missile based on the forces at work on the mass of the missile. Similarly, the seeker head in the missile would scan the environment electronically using the same pattern, revisit rates, and sampling rates of the real missile. This behavior would allow the simulated missile to collect data about a target in the same way that the real missile does.

Physics-based models are most often used to analyze the behavior of an existing weapon or to assist in the design of a new weapon. Understanding exactly how the pieces of the system will behave is an important part of exploring the design space to find optimum capabilities and combinations of capabilities that are optimum for the entire system.

Physics models require a great deal of data and mathematics. The data must be available for the system being modeled, the environment in which it is operating, and any other objects that it will interact with. Mathematics are required to represent a number of different behaviors of the system, interactions that occur within the system, and interactions that occur with other objects. Given this need, it is not sufficient to collect data and equations only for the missile that is to be studied. The model builders must do the same for the environment and for any objects that will interact with the missile.

Because of the volume of data, and the number and complexity of the equations that are required, physics models are necessarily reserved for smaller scenarios that involve only a few objects. Once constructed, the models can be computationally intensive. This means either purchasing a number of high-powered computers or accepting extremely long simulation times. The budget of the project limits the former and the schedule limits the latter. The project is literally a compromise of what the project can afford in time, money, and skilled staff. These limitations are one of the primary causes of the diversity in military modeling solutions. Constraints have forced generations of modelers to create unique representations of their problem.

Stochastic

Stochastic processes, probability and statistics, are most often found in virtual and constructive models. As simulation systems grow larger in their scope of representation, there is a need to capture many more activities and interactions in models. Lacking the detailed knowledge, breadth of expertise, access to data, time to build, and compute power to run a pure physics-based system, modelers have often resorted to a statistical representation of objects and interactions. In this case the models capture the behavior of many iterations of an event and represent individual event results using a probability function and the results of a pseudo random number generator. This type of modeling was introduced to the military modeling community by Stanislaw Ulam when he was working on the design of atomic weapons during World War II (REFERENCE). Ulam encountered a number of problems for which the specific physical behaviors were not known, but where the pattern of outcomes had been measured. Therefore, he chose to use the statistical properties of the event and rely on multiple simulation runs to arrive at an accurate behavior for the entire system.

The previous missile example lends itself well to stochastic models. Instead of representing all of the minute physical interactions, a modeler could choose to represent the outcome of a missile engagement given a limited number of input variables governing each event and recourse to a probability distribution. The use of a pseudo random number in decision-making means that no one engagement contains all of the details of the event as in the physics model above. However, if the model is run a number of times, the randomness of multiple models will blend together and arrive at an accumulated result that is representative of the system behavior that emerges from all of the interacting models.

Stochastic modeling has proven to be extremely useful because it allows modelers to study problems that were previously beyond the limitations of physics models. This has led to the creation of very large simulation systems capable of representing hundreds or thousands of events and objects on a battlefield. However, these models also require that their creators understand both the physical behavior of the system and the statistical aggregation of those behaviors in order to create accurate stochastic models.

Logical Process

Physics and stochastic models are not appropriate for representing the processing of information that is carried out in a computer. These activities are better represented as a sequence of logical steps that make up a defined process. Within the missile there are controllers and computers that process information and make specific decisions based on that stimuli. A model of the missile may best serve the needs of a study by replicating that logic to control the missile’s reaction to maneuvering targets or its response to control signals from an aircraft.

Logical models may also be used to capture the core rules of combat, or the steps that are followed by automated objects in carrying out their mission. These objects may be aircraft, ground vehicles, weapons, sensors, or any other battlefield object. When an object is controlled by a simulation system rather than a human operator, most of the time it is following a logical set of defined processes. These instructions tell it when to move, which direction to go, how fast to proceed, which objects to focus on, and which to ignore. These may be very complex processes, but they do not involve equations of physics or random decision points. In situations when an object should follow some form of “textbook” operation, the logical models are an excellent method of encoding this.

Finite State Machines (or Automata) (FSM) are often used to assist in organizing very complex sets of behaviors. FSM allow the modeler to capture hierarchical behaviors, triggers for changing from one behavior to another, encapsulated behaviors that can be reused in multiple FSM, and deterministic behavior that can be mapped and validated. Military systems that are known as Computer Generated Forces (CGF) or Semi-Automated Forces (SAF) systems often contain a large number of FSM logic models. CGF systems are used to provide automated control of several dozen or hundred objects. A human may provide the overall mission and direction, but the CGF will supplement this with detailed control of movement and engagement through the use of FSM. These systems are not limited to logical models, but may integrate models of all the types described in this section. CGF have proven extremely useful in reducing the number of humans necessary to control simulated battlefield activities by moving detailed control from the hands of the human controller to the FSM logic.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence also encompasses logic process models like FSM and production systems, but it is broader than that. In military modeling, these techniques are used to represent the behavior of humans, groups, and objects that are controlled by humans. The focus is on replicating the decisions that are made under a specific set of stimuli. To accomplish this, modelers and researchers have turned to FSM, expert systems, case-based reasoning, neural networks, means-ends analysis, constraint satisfaction, learning systems, and any other technique that shows promise in accurately capturing the complex reasoning process of humans.

The missile guidance and navigation example that we have been using is not ideal in this area. Though a missile model may use a FSM to model its behavior, it is not attempting to create an artificial representation of intelligence, rather it represents a logical process that is followed robotically. If the missile were being controlled remotely by a human who is viewing the target on a computer screen, then the behavior of the human might be represented using an AI technique. A neural network may represent the human’s ability to discriminate a target in the scene and means-ends analysis may represent the humans decision process in selecting a target, leading its position, and switching from one target to another opportunistically.

AI techniques usually focus on processing information in a human-like manner. Using databases or rule sets, the algorithms attempt to make deductions that lead to behavior selection. The deductive process may be deterministic or stochastic (Russell and Norvig, 2000).

Model Dynamics

2005-10-26T14:04:00.000-04:00

[NOTE: Freewriting first draft for the "Military Modeling" chapter of the upcoming book, Dynamic Modeling, edited by Paul Fishwick, to be published by CRC Press in 2006.]

To this point we have focused on defining and categorizing military modeling according to its application. Those categorizations were meant to illustrate the unique situations, problems, and interests of the developers and customers for military models and simulation systems. In this section we will describe the most dominant forms of dynamic modeling that are used in the community. Because military systems and problems are so diverse and such a large investment has been made in exploring them, there are many more unique forms of dynamic modeling than can be captured in a single chapter or an entire book. However, the forms that are described here are some of the most commonly used. They are also presented as general categories that cover a number of unique implementations.

Dynamic modeling is military simulation often focuses on activities like:
· Movement,
· Perception,
· Exchange,
· Engagement,
· Reasoning, and
· Dynamic Environment.

In this section we describe the dynamics that are included in each of these categories. This is followed by a section that explores multiple approaches to modeling these dynamics.

Movement

Dynamic representation of movement captures the change in an object’s position over time. Models may represent position as a coordinate in two-space, three-space, or a velocity vector. Two-space coordinates usually include a position in X and Y, such as latitude and longitude. For models that represent only ground-based vehicles like trucks, tanks, and foot soldiers, this can be sufficient. The object may have no variation in elevation, or the elevation may come from the underlying elevation of the terrain on which it sits. Position may also include orientation, which in two-space would be limited to a 360 degree angle around the vehicle. A common reference system for this angle is with the zero point being aligned with true north and proceeding clockwise with 90 degrees being east, 180 being south, and 270 being west.

In three-space, the coordinate system includes a representation of elevation. This third dimension may be height above the local terrain, elevation above mean sea level, or distance from the center of a sphere that represents the Earth. The latter measurement evolved during the creation of distributed heterogeneous simulation systems. When networking multiple simulations, differences in the terrain representation within each system led to significant differences in vehicle position with respect to the terrain. Therefore, a non-terrain referenced coordinate system was needed to overcome these differences. When a three-space orientation is added to this model, it includes the pitch, roll, and yaw of the object, creating a six degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) model. When represented as a vector, this may also include the velocity of the vehicle along the axis of orientation.

In their basic form, movement models change these position and orientation coordinates according to a logical or physical representation of movement, as described in the next section. However, most implementations go further to include the effects that movement has on the object and the environment. The movement model may be linked to a model of the fuel consumption of the vehicle. This adds a limiting factor that can stop movement when the fuel is depleted. The inclusion of a fuel model leads to the need for the system to represent a process for replenishing the fuel consumed. Otherwise, the objects in the simulation will eventually grind to a halt. In military modeling, the addition of these details leads to the need for many more models to drive the additional variables that were added. Systems can grow far larger than can be developed, funded, or hosted on a computer through the poor management of these modeling details. Many authors have warned against this gradual creep in features that leads to the eventual failure of the system being developed (Law and Kelton, 1991). This type of growth is not limited to movement modeling, but can occur throughout the system if the designers do not control it.

A movement model may also calculate the number of hours of operation that the object has been used. This information is the root of most system failure and maintenance models. This drives a mean time between failure (MTBF), repair (MTBR), or other similar models.

The interaction of object movement with the terrain can generate environmental changes that trigger yet another model, such as the generation of smoke or dust clouds in the wake of a vehicle. If these changes to the environment are represented, then they call for specific environmental models that can calculate the size and density of the cloud created, as well as its drift and dispersion over time.

Perception

Military objects move about the environment in order to interact with other objects. One of the first steps in this interaction is to perceive or detect other objects. This is the process of applying a sensor to detect the existence, position, and identification of the other object. Sensor models capture the signatures of those objects. A visual sensor will capture reflected light from an object to the sensor. In most cases, the sensor model does not actually represent the path of a light vector, but instead considers the range and orientation between the target object and the sensor and calculates whether the target is potentially detectable based on the effective range and field-of-view of the sensor. A sensor model may also include information about the environment in which the detection is being attempted. For a visual sensor, atmospheric factors like the presence of smoke, dust, fog, and lighting may be used to diminish the possibility of detection. Also, environmental features like hills, trees, and buildings may be interposed between the target and the sensor and impact the detection of an object. The physical characteristics of the target may also be considered. Its size, contrast with the background, movement, and composition may significantly impact its detectability. Larger targets may be easier to see than smaller ones. Targets may have a higher or lower degree of camouflage, changing the ability of the sensor to separate them from the background image.

In military simulations, visual sensors are just one of a large variety of sensors that are available. Many systems include sensor models that collect signature information in the infrared spectrum, sound, emitted radio and radar signals, magnetic properties, and movement and vibrations. Models of each of these can be constructed at a number of different levels of detail, but each must determine whether to include the properties of the sensor, sensing platform, paired geometry, environment, target, and external interference. As illustrated earlier, as the sensor model becomes more complex, it drives the complexity of the entire system. Including all of the categories just listed would trigger the need for additional detail in the sensor model, but also the need for additional details in all target objects and the environment. Often the limitation in creating a high-fidelity sensor model is not driven by our understanding of the sensor, but, rather, by our ability to represent the characteristics of the target and environment that are needed to create such a model. In a military simulation system, the detail included in a model may be limited both by the needs of the customer and by the desire to keep the entire system balanced, not allowing one model to drive all of the others into become larger and more detailed (Pritsker, 1990).

Exchange

After moving and detecting, models are needed to allow objects to exchange materials and information with each other. Battlefield operations often lead to the depletion of materials like fuel, ammunition, food, medical supplies, and people. A logistics model may be used to represent the ability of the military to constantly deliver these materials to objects in operations. Such models are often based on an understanding of the rates of consumption, the pre-deployment of supplies to locations that are close to the operation, and the constant replenishment of supplies through a network of supply nodes. Replenishing supplies within n object on the battlefield is the culminating model of a much more complex representation of the logistics infrastructure that can stretch across an entire country or even around the world. The logistics model must also include mistakes and interference that cause it to breakdown and deprive the military objects of the supplies that keep them operating. A logistics model may be driven by textbook ratios of consumption or it may be include specific messages from the military objects about the levels of supplies consumed. In the latter case, a communications model is needed to carry information about what materials that are being consumed, by whom, and where they are located.

Communication is another model of exchange. The thing being exchanged is information rather than physical items. In the modern military, the amount of information that is carried around in a physical form, such as a book, letter, or paper map, is quite small compared to the amount that is transmitted in digital form. Therefore, modern models focus on communications in the form of digital computer and analog radio networks. A model of radio communications, like that of a sensor, may include the characteristics of the transmitter, transmitting platform, environment, the receiver, the geometry between the sender and receiver, and interference by other objects. Details in the representation of the radio or the signal it generates call for corresponding details in the receivers, environment, and countermeasures.

Military models of digital computer communications are similar to the tools used to study Internet traffic. They represent the senders, receivers, relay nodes, interference from competing traffic, multiple paths for the information to travel, and the loss of a message or the failure of a network. Modeling how people, objects, and units respond to the receipt of this information is included in the section on reasoning.

Engagement

Engagement is strictly a form of exchange. The item being exchanged is a weapon and the effect is the degradation of the operational capabilities of the target. Most military simulations perform movement, perception, and exchange specifically so they can put themselves in a position to engage an enemy target. Engagement has historically been the pivotal centerpiece of a simulation system and one of the most important models in the system. Certainly, not all objects engage the enemy, but those that do not are often referred to as support elements whose mission is to make engagement possible for combat equipped units (Smith, 2000).

An engagement model typically includes the exchange of weapons or firepower from a shooter to a target. This exchange decrements the capability of the shooter by expending ammunition in one of its many forms (e.g. bullets, missiles, bombs, rockets, grenades, artillery rounds). Just as in the perception and communication models described above, this exchange is usually impacted by the geometry between the shooter and the target. The engagement may also be mitigated by the environment and characteristics of the target. Trees, terrain, water, and buildings may interfere with the optimal delivery of the weapon and reduce its impact on the target. The target may also contain defensive systems that counter the effects of the engagement. A defensive model may represent the effects of flares or chaff in deceiving and misleading a guided missile or the protective effects of armor to deflect the weapon.

If the weapon successfully impacts the target and is powerful enough to overcome any interference or defenses, then a level of attrition must be calculated for the target. Different approaches to modeling attrition are described in the next section. Attrition is usually directed at the model state variables that control its ability to perform its primary functions. These may include health or strength, fuel levels, communications capabilities, and mobility. Models may also make a binary decision about whether a vehicle, human, or unit it completely destroyed or not.

The attrition model may be linked to communications and medical models. Communications models propagate the outcome of an engagement so that units or operators are aware that an engagement has occurred. These communications may trigger a medical model that will attempt to conduct extraction and provide medical treatment to simulated humans that are wounded. It may also trigger the logistics model to extract and repair vehicles.

Reasoning

Within large military simulation systems, there are usually many models of human decision-making and behaviors. These have become more prevalent as systems have grown in both the breadth of coverage and the depth of detail of the battlefields that are represented. Representing human thinking and even some computer reasoning are one of the most challenging parts of the current practice of military modeling. This type of information processing is largely not understood and general approximations and simplifications are captured in models.

Reasoning models often rely on the techniques developed within the Artificial Intelligence field. Techniques like finite state machines, expert systems, rule-based systems, case based reasoning, neural networks, fuzzy logic, means-ends analysis, and others are used to organize information and create decisions that are similar to those of living humans. FSM are currently the most widely used technique for both military models and those inside of commercial games. These reasoning models are challenged to perform a wide array of operations, to include commanding subordinate units, decomposing and acting on commands from higher level units, reacting to enemy attacks, selecting maneuver routes, identifying threats and opportunities for engagement, fusing information, and extracting meaning from intelligence reports. Each of these functions can be extremely complicated and require significant computing resources to execute. Reasoning models must balance their level of realism between robotic reactions to stimuli and detailed consideration of the situation prior to selecting an action.

The variety of reasoning models that are required on a battlefield cannot be fit to a single modeling technique. In practice, multiple techniques are required, each applied to a reasoning problem for which it is best suited.

Dynamic Environment

Earlier we described the evolution of the simulated environment from static state structures to dynamic representations of features and their interactions with military objects. Military objects interact with the environment both through direct intention and through accidental collocation. An engineering unit may be tasked to destroy a bridge or a road. This is an operation in which the effects on the environment are the specific intent of the action. In another case, an aircraft may bomb a convoy of trucks moving on a road. In this case, the trucks are the primary targets, but the road may sustain damage because of its collocation with the trucks.

Until recently, military simulations seldom included impacts on the environment. However, with the current focus on precision operations, there is much more interest in destroying specific buildings, roads, bridges, communications equipment, and pieces of the social infrastructure. Since this data is usually found in the environmental database, models that accurately modify environmental information are needed.

For decades, military organizations have worked on models that accurately represent the engagement that takes place between two tanks, airplanes, or ships. It is becoming necessary for those models to also impact the trees, terrain, and roads in the vicinity of these engagements. This means that information on the effects of weapons on trees is necessary, as well as their effects on buildings, roads, bridges, and a host of other types of surrounding terrain.

Even though these models are making the environment a dynamic part of the simulation system, the type and level of damage done to a tree is seldom the focus of the experiment or exercise that is being conducted. Therefore, the detail in these models is not as critical that in the models that govern the dynamic changes to other military objects.

Simulation Categories

2005-10-25T14:03:00.000-04:00

[NOTE: Freewriting first draft for the "Military Modeling" chapter of the upcoming book, Dynamic Modeling, edited by Paul Fishwick, to be published by CRC Press in 2006.]

Over the past several decades, a number of different types of models have been developed for representing a military system or mission. These have gradually converged into commonly recognized categories of representation. These categories have significantly improved the ability of military modelers to communicate with each other and to exchange models without misunderstanding the differences between the products being created.

Engineering

Engineering models focus on the details of what a system does. These capture the physical properties of materials, liquids, aerodynamics, servomechanisms, and computer control of specific systems. They also include interactions between two physical objects or between an object and its environment. An engineering model attempts to understand the physical capabilities of the system at a level that is accurate enough to be used to design the system. Historically, physical prototypes were used to conduct these experiments. However, advanced computer technologies and modeling techniques have allowed us to create digital models of systems that are nearly as predictive as are live physical tests. These models offer many advantages over their physical counterparts. They are almost infinitely malleable so that experiments can be conducted on many thousands of variations rather than just a few physical prototypes. They are nearly infinitely instrumentable. It is possible to collect data from all points in space and time around the event of interest. When using physical prototypes we are often limited by our ability to place sensor, communication, and recording equipment at the precise place and time of interest.

Virtual

A “virtual model” often refers to a three-dimensional representation of a system that is operating in a digital three-dimensional environment. The focus is usually on the visual appearance of the object and the environment, more than on the properties of physics that were the focus of engineering models. Because of its visual focus, the objects most often represented are military vehicles and humans that would appear on a battlefield. This category is closely aligned with the more popularly recognized term, “virtual reality”.

A virtual model and environment are usually constructed to simulate individual soldiers who are immersed in a system that generates visual, aural, and tactile stimuli. The goal is usually to train, test, or measure the ability of the human to respond in a desirable manner to the stimuli. Flight simulators are the most popularly recognized form of these models and systems.

Constructive

A “constructive model” represents an accumulation or aggregation of a number of objects, behaviors, and properties. In order to deal with the incredibly large and complex missions of the military, a very structured organizational hierarchy has evolved. To represent the information that is available at the different levels in this hierarchy and to represent the functions of the hierarchy itself, constructive models have been created.

A constructive model may represent a flight of four aircraft as a single item in the simulation. It may also group several hundred vehicles, humans, and equipment into a single object model. This model must then represent the aggregated behaviors of its many different constituent parts. There are a number of motivations for this type of modeling. First, it allows the simulation system developers to capture the operations of a much broader battlefield in a form that can be run on a reasonable computer suite. Second, in many cases the behavior of groups of objects are not understood at the engineering or virtual level, but can be represented as a higher-level aggregate. Third, this type of model mimics the organization, representation, and information that are used in the real military organizational hierarchy.

Very basic constructive models of military operations can be seen in many board and computer games, such as Chess, Stratego, and Risk. Constructive simulation systems differ from virtual systems in that the human operator or player is often positioned outside of the battle. Engagements are not usually targeted at the human player, so they are in a position to think more strategically about the situation and are not required to react to individual events that appear to threaten them personally, as would occur in a virtual system.

Live

Though a “live model” appears to be an inappropriate description, the term has been adopted to refer to activities in which live humans, vehicles, and equipment engage in mock combat. The combat events do not involve real munitions and attempt to avoid situations that could have lethal outcomes. Using computer, communication, navigation, and laser technologies, training areas have been constructed in which combatants can use their real weapons in a form that is as physically realistic as possible. Laser beams often replace bullets and computer messages indicate where bombs are dropped.

Live modeling allows humans to train in the real environment, to experience the physical hardships of traversing rough terrain, operating in the desert sun, and experiencing the effects of dirt and water on the equipment. The humans and vehicles become living models in a living simulation. In many cases, these live participants are also supplemented with virtual and constructive models to enrich the entire training experience.

Environment

The model of the environment has historically been a static representation of terrain, vegetation, roads, rivers, wind, clouds, rain, ocean waves, salinity, ocean bottom, and any number of other features. This environment has provided a medium within which the above models operated. The environment impeded the movement of objects, obstructed sensor visibility, and changed the outcomes all types of operations. However, in the midst of all of this activity, the environment itself remained static and unchanged. A bomb dropped on a truck may destroy the truck, but make no change to the underlying terrain or the surrounding vegetation.

Recently, this has been changing. Military simulation systems have included dynamic models of the interaction between military systems and environmental features. Simulated objects are able to knock down trees, crater roads, dig holes, build barriers, and destroy buildings. To support this, a new form of environmental model has evolved which understands the physical effects of vehicles and weapons on dirt, trees, and masonry block structures. Environmental modeling is no longer limited to static data structures, but includes dynamic models that respond to military operations.

Military Simulation

2005-10-24T14:02:00.000-04:00

[NOTE: Freewriting first draft for the "Military Modeling" chapter of the upcoming book, Dynamic Modeling, edited by Paul Fishwick, to be published by CRC Press in 2006.]

The United States military has made its own unique definitions of the terms “modeling” and “simulation.” For their purposes, modeling is often defined as, “a descriptive, functional, or physical representation of a system” (NSC, 2000). These representations may take the form of a mathematic equation, a logical algorithm, a three-dimensional digital image, or a partial physical mock-up of the system. Models are applied so widely that the variety of systems of interest is almost without bounds. In these systems military weapons systems are usually very prominently represented, to include land, air, and sea vehicles; communications and radar equipment; hand-held weapons; and individual soldiers. But models also represent the decision-making process and automated information processing that occur inside the human brain and within battlefield computers. They extend to representations of the environment that is made up of terrain, vegetation, cultural features, the atmosphere, ocean, and RF environment. Different combinations of these are needed in order to accurately represent potential military situations.

One military definition of simulation is, “a system or model that represents activities and interactions over time. A simulation may be fully automated, or it may be interactive or interruptible” (NSC, 2000). This definition attempts to encompass human-in-the-loop simulators for training, as well as systems that serve as analytical tools for computing outcomes without the aid of a human participant.

The official categorization of the use of models and simulation within the military is to divide them into three large application groups.

The first is for use in “requirements and acquisition”. In these applications, models are used to provide insight into the cost and performance of military equipment, processes, or missions that are planned for the future. These use scientific inquiry to discover or revise facts and theories of phenomena, followed by transformation of these discoveries into physical representations.

The second category is in exploring “advanced concepts”. These models present military systems and situations in a form that allows the military to conduct concept exploration and trade studies into alternatives. These trade studies often explore multiple variations on a new weapon or tactic and attempt to measure the effectiveness of each of them. The result is a general appreciation for the different options available and some rough measure for ranking them. The models may be used to understand physical weapons or equipment, but they may also explore different processes for organizing and executing a mission. These require an understanding of processes and the interactions that occur between different steps in their processes. The models assist the military in creating its doctrine of operations, constructing its internal organization, and selecting materials for acquisition.

The third category is in “training and development”. Models that are embedded in a simulation system are used to stimulate individuals and groups of personnel with specific military scenarios. The goal is to determine the degree to which they have learned to execute the doctrines they have been taught. It also gives them the opportunity to experiment with new ideas and to determine how useful these might be in a real warfighting situation. All of this can be done in a controlled environment that is free of life threatening situations that are part of real combat operations.

Finally, it should be noted that military modeling and simulation has always been the basis for a large segment of entertainment products. Many of the modeling concepts behind paper board-wargaming in the 1950’s were developed simultaneously by the RAND Corporation for serious military training and by Charles Roberts at the Avalon Hill game company for popular entertainment (Perla, 1990). This trend has continued for over fifty years and can be seen today in comparing realistic three-dimensional military training systems and the very active computer gaming industry. Systems like America’s Army provide an environment for experimentation and training in the military, a device to enhance Army recruitment and education about the military lifestyle, and a game for use by anyone looking for a little excitement in their free time.

Hurricane Wilma

2005-10-23T22:23:00.000-04:00

The news shows what terrible things hurricanes can be. Well, one is headed here right now. It should pass by tomorrow. We lived through 3 hurricanes last year. This year there have been 2 close ones. For tomorrow, the government has closed the schools. This is mostly a precaution against tornadoes (which are thrown off by hurricanes) and heavy rain. The hurricane is predicted to be pretty far south of us and we are only getting thunderstorms and rain. It looks like 2-4 inches of rain in a couple of hours. That is not bad for Florida, we can absorb that. There may also be high winds, 40-60 MPH. This is not bad. Last year we have 110 MPH winds at our house. All trees that were coming down are already down. The worst it can do is nock down the fence … again.

Hurricanes are terrible and can destroy your house. If you have terrible luck or terrible judgment, then they can also kill you. But for most people, we emerge after the storm and start cleaning up. Last year it took about a week to clear the trees and debris from our yards. We moved it to the curb and waited between 3 and 10 weeks for the FEMA contractors to come and get it. I caught a small snake among the debris, but it did not make a good pet. The state put all of the trees through a chipper and announced that anyone could have as much free mulch for their yards as they could carry away … very smart.

Tomorrow will not be too bad. It will just require some adjustments. No school, working from home, most businesses closed. On Tuesday everything should be back to normal. Unfortunately, the people at Punta Gorda, FL look like they are going to be hit again. They bore the brunt of Hurricane Charley last year and are getting it from Wilma this year.

Orlando is about as safe as you can get in the state of Florida. We are the high ground that the rest of the state evacuates to. Leaving Orlando means things are really bad – like a direct hit from a Category 5.

I always console myself by thinking of the 100 year-old wood frame houses that are still standing in Key West. If those have made it this long, the hurricanes are not going to totally wipe out a city.

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200524.html

Mixed Methods

2005-10-22T08:10:00.000-04:00

This week’s case study illustrated the different strengths of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods of research. In the process of extracting a purely qualitative and quantitative approach to the problem it became clear that real organizations are faced with complex problems that interweave both qual and quant issues. I believe that for all practical purposes, mixed methods are necessary to understand and solve real business problems. It is not sufficient to understand the financial problems of the company, without also understanding how these are impacting the morale of the employees.

Businesses are social structures that handle money. They are not financial structures that use people as parts. Though an organization may report its progress and activities in financial terms, all of that can only be accomplished through the application of human effort that is willingly applied. Money is a motivator to buy effort, but you cannot pay for all of the effort that is available from a person, and you cannot afford it even if you could. You must create an organization that generates social and psychic payment for services as well as financial payment. In this sense you pay people by the way you treat them and make them feel. This generates additional effort beyond 40 hours/week.

Mixed research methods provide the flexibility necessary to be able to explore all areas of the complex social structure known as a business. Measuring finances or production rates is difficult. Measuring the human dynamic of the organization is also difficult. Finding a way to combine the two and identify a relationship between them is much more difficult. Figuring out how to convert revenue into emotional satisfaction is a form of alchemy and the formula for the conversion is different in every organization.

Regression

2005-10-21T07:06:00.000-04:00

Regression is the creation of a model that predicts dependent variables from independent ones. We have been doing a lot of linear regression, assuming that there is a linear relationship between all of the variables involved. This is a trend that I see in other works as well. When a relationship is not linear, there are sometimes techniques to transform the variables into a form that is linear.

Nonlinear regression is not as strictly guided as is linear. It requires that the analyst look for a number of different patterns and equations that could fit the data.

Regression is also something that hypnotists do to take a subject into their past and examine a situation that has been forgotten or obscured. When I was a teenager, hypnosis was all the rage. I have not seen or heard anything of it in years. I am not at all certain that it still exists in a credible form. There was a time when people were hypnotized and claimed to recall their past lives. On the surface this looks cool, but you have examine what is really happening here. Is hypnosis really any different than sleeping? If it is similar that perhaps what we are discovering is a semi-conscious dream. I have dreamed a lot of things and very seldom expected any of it to be a true reflection of reality.

Regression is something that people do themselves when they fall back or retreat back to a previous state. They lose or give up some capability – returning to a child-like state or just forgetting a new task they have learned. My daughter regresses in her violin skills occasionally.

I am writing along and I digress in topic, take myself from one point to another until I am away from the original subject. If I regress while writing, does that mean that I fall back and write the same thing over again? Does it mean that I fall back and write the same things over again? I am digressing from the original regression. What is digressive regression or regressive digression?

Epistemology

2005-10-20T22:27:00.000-04:00

Epistemology is the study of knowledge or truth. In this class I begin to see that the methods of determining what is true had to be created just like many technologies were. I think that “belief” was one of the first sources of knowledge, and still one of the largest. People needed an authoritative source and knowledge had not been preserved in an objective form yet. But it was being preserved in the form of legends and beliefs. So these became the foundation of what a person should believe. However, once a more scientific method was created and knowledge could be preserved, it was inevitable that this would supplant belief and the primary foundation or source of knowledge.

Perhaps it is not true that science overthrew religion because the former was objective and the latter objective. Perhaps Satanic forces were not a factor at all. Instead, people and society needed an effective source of working knowledge. Science provided new information that “worked”. It lead to better crop production or animal husbandry. There was not really a war between religion and science, but rather between productivity and nonproductivity.

I saw a pictures where knowledge was portrayed as the intersection between truth and belief. This is an interesting picture. It means that knowledge resides in our heads, arrives through one of the two conduits, and must simply satisfy both constraints in order to be working knowledge. However, I think people also retain some knowledge that is simply belief without, or perhaps in spite of, truth. People are not completely logical. Everyone has their own favorite beliefs. They all want some things to be true in spite of the facts. These bits of knowledge must often be kept private or masked as “fun” in order to be preserved and practiced.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Understanding why we know things is an interesting field. But it is hard to imagine evolving into such a creature. And is such a person even useful? Do they actually create new gateways to truth and knowledge? Or do they just validate the gateways that are found by other people? I don’t really know. No one in my neighborhood is an epistemologist … or can even spell it.

Management Consulting

2005-10-19T22:12:00.000-04:00

Business ranks are filled with managers, some of them very well trained. So why is there such a big market for management consultants? Perhaps all of the practicing managers are so swamped with the small details of company operations that no one has the time, energy, or brain cells left to look at the big picture and see that situation it is in, or to look at the competition and see what the future looks like. How many people on a company’s staff are assigned to study the competition, and nothing else? How many people are free of daily responsibilities to look at strategy?

Perhaps, management consulting is not a business that addresses weakness in a company. Perhaps they are part of the intentional structure of the company. If you do not need this person full time it might be much more economical, as well as effective, to use an outsider. You only have to pay them for the time used, then you can cut them loose. If you do not like someone, you can send them back to the consulting company, no questions asked, no lawsuits.

But, the consultants themselves cannot bill their services as “we do what you could do yourself if you would just someone on staff.” They have to present themselves as filled with special talents and knowledge. They build an image and mystique that implies that they are beyond mere managers.

As consultants they also get to develop experience dealing with problems from the outside, prescribing solutions, and dealing with company leaders. They do not have to do this part-time while diluting their experience with daily management tasks. So they should be better at consulting on a problem and moving on.

Interesting … so it is a business born out of the need to cut internal spending and to escape legal restrictions.

Alligator Snapping Turtle

2005-10-18T06:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we were returning from a business lunch and saw a large turtle crossing the road in the business park. This is a common occurrence in Orlando and, when possible, there are many people who stop to help the turtle get out of the road – rather than waiting to see it smashed into a pancake. In Florida there are a number of types of turtles that easily grow up to a foot or more in diameter. It is not uncommon to find a 20 or 30 year-old turtle in the road about to be demolished.

The common procedure is to stop in front of the turtle, turn on your emergency flashers, and get out of the car. Then you give the turtle a nudge with your foot and most of them will retreat into their shells. You can then push them to the curb and lift them over. Then you just wait for the turtle to emerge and heard it back into the woods. Simple, safe, and rewarding.

We did all of this for yesterday’s turtle as well. But when we got out of the car, I noticed that this turtle had a six-inch tail that had upright scales running across the top like a dinosaur. This was the first clue that it was not an ordinary turtle. When we got closer we could see that the turtle had an extremely heavy shell, armored legs, a triangular head, and a mouth shaped like a parrot’s beak. Second clue. This was not a nice docile turtle, it was an alligator snapping turtle. These animals are tough, mean, and disease carrying (don’t touch them). They act a lot like an alligator that lives in a shell.

In spite of this the rescue mission carried on. I nudged the turtle with my dress shoe to get him to close up. But, alligator snapping turtles to not retreat from a threat like this. Instead, this 18-inch long turtle (perhaps 20 pounds), shot out its neck opened its jaws, hissed like a snake, and started jumping toward me. This is where the rescuers jumped back in surprise and fright. Hmmm … maybe this turtle will have to get smashed. So we got a long stick and a small army shovel out of my truck and tried to push him around with these. This provoked even more vicious attacks. This is one tough turtle. As we circled around behind him he turned to keep his attacking face toward us. He snapped at the three-foot dowel stick like an alligator and bit down one time.

By this time several cars had slowed down to watch the show before moving on. I got around behind him and used the dowel stick to push him to the curb, while he hissed, jumped, and threatened us the whole time. Seth tried to use the shovel to scoop him up and lift him over the curb. The turtle was so aggressive that he would not stay on the shovel. Our close proximity also gave us a good whiff of his odor. This turtle stunk like a sewer. The top of his shell was not clean and smooth. It was rough like an alligator’s back and covered with moss and black slime.

Finally, Seth was able to get the shovel under him and flip him unceremoniously up and over he curb. We had figured out that we did not have to be quite so gentle, this was one tough turtle. Once in the grass the turtle stood up a good two inches and walked briskly back into the swamp from which he had come. Rescue accomplished.

Don’t mess with alligator snapping turtles. They are really an alligator that is mad for being trapped in a turtle’s body.

Statistics

2005-10-15T09:45:00.000-04:00

The old saying that you can prove anything with statistics is plain wrong. What is really happening is that statistics are illustrating how complex a problem or question really is. When you apply measures and confidence to a problem, you are immediately limited to that part of the problem that you have quantified. Suddenly it becomes very clear that the problem has many, many facets and that there are complex interactions between them. The world that looked so simple unveils some of its complexity when you are required to describe it numerically. Mathematics in general is complex because it is an expression of the real world, which is far more complex that mathematics.

In college classes, statistics is presented as a tool that can be applied to most real world problems. In truth, statistics can be applied to very few real world situations. The real world is so complex and misbehaved that the equations we have at our disposal are insufficient for describing or understanding it. That is why real problems have to be decomposed into smaller parts. Our equations can describe these. But, once decomposed we can only make claims or predictions about those smaller pieces. Explaining the many combinations and limitations that emerge from this is where statistics gets its reputation for being criminally manipulable. Mathematicians and statisticians are constantly pushing the field into more complex equations in an attempt to create equations that can represent more of the world.

Statistics are not trusted by most people because they are too complex for them to understand. There is no quick and easy way to understand statistics. You have to start at the beginning and work your way through the complex maze. No matter how many USA Today surveys and graphs you read, you will never learn statistics from those. There are just some fields that are best left to the professionals – quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, statistics, and auto repair.

So academics in all fields find that they must master some level of statistics (but not auto repair). It is taught is most departments and is embraced and abhorred by everyone. Since it is so broadly used, it has to be broadly talked about and everyone has an opinion on it. I have no opinion on quantum mechanics (good, bad, or useful) because I do not ever think about it. But every academic has an opinion on statistics.

Wikipedia

2005-10-14T07:18:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia is a wonderful source of information. The world at large has come together to contribute articles on a million topics. It is like a huge collaborative encyclopedia, but it contains articles that are obscure, cultural, and entertaining. Unlike Britannica, Wikipedia has no limit on what can be posted to it. There may be an entry on the space shuttle mission that launched 30 minutes ago or one on Hispanic heroes of television. The Internet has given us some marvelous research and reading tools – Wikipedia and Google are two of the most popular. For the first time information on every imaginable topic can be found in a few moments.

But, is Wikipedia a reliable research source? Currently, the academic answer is “no”. Since there is no formal and controlled process for limiting what is posted, the academic world does not feel that it is reliable. I have seen this unreliability myself. In one of Wikipedia’s daily-featured articles on the Cat’s Eye Nebula, some contributor edited the content (perfectly normal) and replaced astronomic facts for profane sentences of a sexual nature. I was surprised to find the graffiti, and captured a screenshot of it. However, I also continued to monitor the page to see how long the article would remain corrupted. Within 9 minutes someone in the world spotted the corruption and fixed it. Clearly, there is an editorial process at work on Wikipedia. It is not a formal board of editors. Instead the editors who must approve an article are the entire world. Potentially, any articles posted will be edited and approved by 10,000 people. Possibly Wikipedia articles are subject to more critical review that anything in a journal or newspaper.

However, this informal editing process does not guarantee the quality of all million articles in Wikipedia. Some topics may have many, highly qualified people editing them, while others have few interested contributors and even fewer who are well qualified. In addition, there is no way to identify the qualifications of these contributors. Wiki does keep track of which subscribers have edited an article and when, but there is no info on who they are.

Wikipedia is like USA Today and the television news shows. It will become the primary source of information for most of the world. It has already far surpassed Britannica as the leading reference source in the world. But, the nature of its content generation will prevent it from being a major academic source … in its current form. Wiki has launched a number of specialized services. One of these could be an academic research site where the contributors register their CV’s and their contributions are labeled. This could easily evolve into an authoritative source.

Doctor

2005-10-12T22:30:00.000-04:00

For this entry I cheated. Rather than complete freewriting, I read the Wikipedia entry for “doctor” to prime my mental pump (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor).

Why are we so fascinated and desirous of the title doctor? Since childhood we have heard one of the most respected members of the community called “doctor”. He may be rich or poor, he may be a close friend or a stranger, but in all cases he is respectfully called doctor. I think this creates an image of respect that we are eager to obtain. In a profession, it also indicates the highest level of learning. It is like the black belt of education.

It was interesting to learn that the title emerged in reference to educators, not in reference to medical practitioners. It was later adopted in medicine and could be used by people who had achieved only a Bachelor’s degree in medicine or surgery. By that standard I hold several doctorate titles (as opposed to degrees) already. This was later supplemented by the requirement to take a postgraduate test to attain the title – similar to the PE or CPA exam.

As I understand it, the legal profession has also begun awarding the doctor title at the completion of a master’s equivalent of study – Doctor of Jurisprudence. In graduate school I lived in a complex filled from law students and can attest that they may genuinely have earned their doctorate in those 3 years that they studied. As hard as I was working to get my MS in Statistics, they were working a lot harder for their degree, and a year longer. I suspect that medical doctors go through the same. So I would not begrudge them the title. But I would maintain that the two degrees indicate a very different understanding and practice of research. A Dr. of most subjects must learn to explore a field in a new way and make a unique contribution. I think this creates a different kind of thinking than diagnosing a disease or a legal situation.

I am looking forward to completing this degree, but I may be a little too reserved to parade the title and degree out in front of all of my colleges. It will go directly on my business cards, wall, and maybe an occasional signature line. But, it will not become part of my personal identity. Perhaps, I think the achievement is more private than public, but certainly something of professional and financial value. I work with a number of Dr.’s and find them to be a great breed of people. Smart, inquisitive, filled with interesting thoughts, and generally self-assured enough to be helpful more than boastful.

After a few centuries, I am really surprised that a higher degree has not emerged. As more people achieve Dr., I wonder if a Master-Doctor or Dr.Dr. will appear? Could it be useful? I know people doing post-doctorate research. But these are usually just students who are in transition between their studies and their professorship. It is a way to begin working in a desirable institution before being placed in a professorial track. It is also a good way to put Dr.’s to work in a research center, but without the requirements to handle classes. The growth of such positions also indicates that there are getting to be more Dr’s than are needed to carry on the educational mission of the country.

I encourage all of my new hires to get a master’s degree. It is no longer the rarity it once was. It is becoming a useful ticket in moving up an organization. Most of them are listening and some of the older workers have noticed it enough to return to earn their own MS after 10+ years in the industry.

Since medical and legal doctorates seem to have been an honorific title adopted by a profession, I think we would do well to extend this practice to mathematics or computer science, it would certainly shorten my path to the title.

Survey

2005-10-11T23:20:00.000-04:00

Richard Dawson: Survey says!

You can make millions of dollars with a simple idea like this. So what can Family Feud and USA Today turn the simplest surveys into multi-million dollar franchises, and expert surveyors can barely break into the middle class? Well, mostly it is the topic of what you are asking about. People are hungry to know whether other people are interested in the same TV shows they like, shoes they wear, favorite ice cream, and best looking movie star. They will pay for that same information over and over again in the form of magazine subscriptions, television shows, cable subscriptions, Internet sites, mail flyers. But you want to understand the impact loneliness on the elderly or of stress on teachers, well that is not so great information. Everyone wants to know more about “me”. How much are other people like me? The lonely elderly person in the nursing home … nope, nothing like me, so I don’t care. The teacher who is stressed out over child discipline … nope, not my problem, should have chosen a different career. I want to hear about how many people out there like chocolate chip ice cream over vanilla. I want to know whether they prefer diet coke or diet pepsi, now that is the important stuff.

It seems people can never get enough validation. Is everyone on a giant inferiority train? Why do they have to be constantly reassured that it is ok to buy the lowest priced toilet paper and the highest priced ice cream? Who cares? We have these choices because we are lucky and fortunate in the time and place we live. Why can’t we just enjoy it, because billions of other people never get a chance to those like that.

Surveys … asking other people what they experience, like, know, feel, did, wish … blah, blah, blah. This is all very interesting. But can we start asking important questions. Can we start to understand how people are trying to improve their lives or those of others? Can we ask about how to reduce pollution or child abuse? If you can make a million dollars on a survey, it is almost guaranteed that you are asking the most meaningless questions possible. Important questions don’t pay so well.

Credibility

2005-10-10T23:20:00.000-04:00

Ennis discusses the importance of the credibility of sources. He talks a little about academic/printed sources. But he talks more about the credibility of individuals in an interview or a testimony situation. The ideas he presents are pretty obvious. Credibility comes from expertise developed from experience or training. Credibility comes from direct experience – as in a witness who actually observed an event. Credibility comes from a long reputation of being trusted or accurate. Credibility comes from having the information checked out.

He also points out that we accept information from sources all around us every day. We accept credibility in many different forms. Why do news anchors wear suits? Credibility. We are more inclined to believe someone who is wearing a suit than a shirt and tie or a polo shirt. Grave an serious information should be delivered by a person who is dressed in a serious manner. Notice that the news anchor must wear a suit, but the weatherman and the sports caster can dress down to shirt and tie. Their news is less serious. They are reporting information that comes from nature or entertainment.

Credibility comes from neighbors we trust, coworkers that we have observed, family members who raise us. There needs to be some reason to believe the person. In daily contact there is no opportunity for double-checking information. The checks come from the relationship, history, or a nice suit.

Once lost, credibility is a tough thing to earn back. How many times can a source be wrong before they are totally discounted … 1, 2, 3? Not many more than that. How many times does a source have to be right before they are trusted … 5, 10, 100?

Anonymity is a great eraser. In a small town everyone has you pegged. In a big town, you can just move your operation a few miles and start with a clean slate. Hence people moving to New York, LA, or Nashville to start with a new name and a new chance at something different. In the new mobile society, the more people move, the more opportunities they have to take another shot at their dreams or ambitions. Staying in the same old town brands you with the same old reputation. You have to leave, become an unknown, reinvent yourself, and build a new reputation if you want to move up. Credibility comes from anonymity.

America is full of fresh starts. Maybe that is what makes us different from other countries. You can leave Europe, move to America, and become a new person. You are not son of-son of-son of, going back generations. You are a new and fresh individual. I would expect the same in Australia.

Examples

2005-10-09T20:58:00.000-04:00

Scientifically an example is not relevant. It is a single instance, a sample of one. Such a small data point is not reliable. It cannot point to a characteristic of a population. An example is anecdotal in many cases, subject to exaggeration and interpretation. It is not solid.

But, it is interesting, that most of our memories and the prototypes of our beliefs and behaviors are all in the form of examples. The instance of one comes to represent a concept for an entire population for every situation that a person encounters. Much of the Biblical New Testament is a series of examples … stories of events that illustrate a moral of behavior or a characteristic of society. In many ways, region can be based on examples.

Scientifically we ask people to conduct experiments. Collect data on large populations. Look for trends that span many more than one instance. Even a qualitative researcher will interview multiple people in an attempt to identify and generalize a principal that is present across a population. They use examples to illustrate, but the example is not the foundation of the study.

I remember relatives, my own past, and significant events in the form of examples … snippets of brain-video that carry images, sounds, feelings, and meaning. What is the file type of this memory? A JPEG file carries graphic information. An MPEG carried graphics with sound and text. What format carries feelings and links to other snippets?

Principles of truth are almost always stored as a part of an example. There does seem to be a rulebook in my head that is like a textbook without pictures. But it is not written in words. It is written in symbols … some form of YES, NO and MAYBE are encoded to pop up when I think of an idea. Perhaps a stop sign is similar to the symbols in my head. When I see a snake, the rulebook says stop. Once this is accomplished, then the brain begins to consider what it should do about the situation. I might compare the situation to previous examples in my brain and find one that suggests the best reaction to this.

Life appears to be made up of examples. The non-scientific literature is all about examples and illustrations. Notice that the management advice books provide an example of a situation and suggest that this example will stand you well for all similar situations.

So if our minds are full of examples, then they are unscientific … but still effective. Our ability to function should be improved by creating a more scientific approach to problem solving. In fact, in the field of system dynamics, that is one of their main premises. They notice that intuitive reactions to stimuli or information are often wrong. Only by studying relationships over time can you really understand the effects of specific actions taken. Is it possible that the world will evolve into higher levels of complexity and our minds must adopt a systemic way of thinking merely to make daily decisions? This begs the question … In general, is the world evolving to higher levels of complexity? Certainly we all feel that our world is becoming more complex. But we must not trust our feelings on this. They may confuse a higher volume of simple information as a higher level of complexity.

Week in Arizona ... On Paper

2005-10-01T19:34:00.000-04:00

This week’s journal was done in paper while I was vacationing in Arizona. The topics discussed were:
· Exploration
· Intellectual
· Serendipity
· Service
· Patience

The last was really the only one that was any good.

Information Technology

2005-09-28T19:33:00.000-04:00

IT has its roots in the beginnings of the computer industry and the emergence of the Internet as business tools. Initially, both of these technologies were experiments into what could be accomplished. Their early applications were in very specialized fields that required computing power, like the analysis of nuclear weapon effects, or problems that needed long-distance reliable communications, like military command and control. However, as these technologies became more affordable and more accessible, other businesses began to apply them to every form of industry. Companies gradually discovered the best approaches for leveraging these IT systems toward improved production efficiencies, rapid information exchange, meaningful staff reductions, and additional new inventions – each of which proved to be a competitive advantage. However, IT is not a proprietary technology. It is a publicly available product that can be purchased by any company that can afford the price. Therefore, advantages achieved through computer controlled milling machines are soon copied by other companies until everyone in the industry is performing more efficiently. IT lifts all companies that adopt it, while those who do not, sink to the bottom and lose their relevance.

Since a company cannot defend, control, or hide IT from its competitors, it cannot retain a long-term monopoly on any advantages gained from it. Carr argues that the advantages are temporary and are lost over time. Early adopters realize some benefits at the beginning. With experience, they are able to increase these benefits through improvements in implementation and by finding the places where IT has the most leverage. However, as competitors adopt this same technology, the relative advantage of one company over another diminishes. Therefore, after reaching some peak, the advantage decreases until it is a very small part of the business. Like the Poisson distribution, the advantages gained never recede completely to zero. Small advantages can be gained through IT system improvements, wise selection of competing products, and good timing on new purchases and implementations. However, the lion’s share of the advantage is in the past and will not be repeated.

The crux of Carr’s argument is not that this transition happens for all innovations, but that it has already occurred for IT. He suggests that the early adopters have discovered the most powerful ways to extract value from IT for business activities and that these methods have been copied across the industry. Therefore, IT is already becoming ubiquitous and providing correspondingly less advantage to those who use it. His argument is that we are certainly in the central region labeled “Diminishing advantage” and may even be getting close to the right-hand side of “Weak advantages”.

The ubiquity of the technology is the source of its own downfall in providing an advantage, but this is also its strength as an enduring ingredient within business. A similar path has been followed by the steam engine, railroad, telegraph, telephone, and electricity generation. All of these have become an integral part of world industry. None of them would be considered optional (assuming that the telegraph is the grandfather to the Internet), though none are considered a unique source of competitive advantage to the companies that use them because every competitor has access to them as well. Lumping IT into the same “old” category as electricity has drawn criticism from across the IT industry. Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, is one of those leaders who have challenged Carr’s position. However, like many other IT defenders, Metcalfe does not really address the question of whether IT has reached its peak in providing competitive advantage. Instead, he points out that IT sales are still strong, companies still need the products, and vendors continue to create better products for these customers. He seems to miss the entire connection to competitive advantage and focuses instead on revenue generation. Andy Grove, legendary Chairman of Intel, does understand what Carr is saying. He agrees that basic transaction processing has crossed the second knee in the S-curve and is a mature technology around the world. However, he disagrees that all IT services and computer-based systems can be lumped into this category. He believes there is considerable room for innovation in areas like digital music, digital telephones, wireless access, and data search. He contends that Carr attracted such a flood of attention because he published the book during the third year of a technology recession.

Many Books ... Same Ideas

2005-09-27T19:32:00.000-04:00

I read the first two chapters in a couple of research methods books I bought last semester. I have looked at the opening chapters of 4 books so far and find that all of them present very similar ideas. They define a theory, they define research, and they divide research in applied and basic (or pure). They describe the process of conducting research and its defining characteristics. Sekaran presents the defining characteristics of research as:
1. Purposiveness – having a definite aim or purpose,
2. Rigor – having “a good theoretical base and a sound methodological design”,
3. Testability – analytically applied to a hypothesis,
4. Replicability – able to be duplicated by other researchers and leading to the same conclusions,
5. Precision and Confidence – results closely replicate the real world and contains a high probability of being correct,
6. Objectivity – based on the facts uncovered and not on the subjective biases of the researcher,
7. Generalizability – can be applied to larger populations or situations than were used for the study, and
8. Parsimony – explains the research and its results in a manner that is clear and understandable to a larger audience.

Classification of Research

2005-09-26T19:32:00.000-04:00

Cooper & Emory provide an interesting hierarchy of research that is worth capturing in the journal:
· Reporting – provides and account of summation of data. The research does not seek inference of conclusions.
· Description – explores the who, what, when, where, and how of the data. Researcher creates a profile of a group of problems.
· Explanation – seeks the reason behind the phenomena that is occurring.
· Prediction – creates a theory or model of the phenomena that can be used to predict when it will occur and under what conditions.
· Control – identifies means to control the phenomena or to control the impact that the phenomena has.

This hierarchy puts some of my previous work into perspective. Many of us hope to understand something well enough to control its effects. But, this is the highest level and is not directly assailable. A researcher must work through the previous levels or build on the work of previous researchers who have done so.

Asking Questions

2005-09-25T19:31:00.000-04:00

The first chapter of Salkind led me to consider the importance of finding an appropriate question. I have just completed DMGT730 in which we worked through the process of writing a dissertation proposal. Though the class involved a great deal of research and reading, the really difficult intellectual problem was in finding an appropriate question to investigate. For my own topic, I adjusted the question six times before submitting the final assignment.

Once you locate an area of interest, it may be a good exercise to list the many, many variables that surround that area. These variables may suggest questions that could be posed. The student of research may then list all of the questions that could be the topic of a dissertation. Many of these cannot be pursued because they are too vague, poorly formed, or contain impossible requirements. Remove the questions that cannot be used. Of those remaining, many will have already been examined. A study of the literature will eliminate more questions. This study will also lead to new questions that were generated as a result of previous research.

This exercise is probably not the best way to locate THE problem that a student will research. But, it is a good way to come to an appreciation of the number of questions that can be asked. It might also help in understanding the difference between good and poor research topics.

Quantitative

2005-09-23T11:43:00.000-04:00

The quantitative world is a beautiful thing, specifically because it is simple, predictable, measurable, and without emotional entanglements. A pound of feathers and a pound of butter really are the same thing. In a quantitative world you should be able to show up for work for 40 hours and receive 40 dollars pay every week without end.

Having grown up in a quantitative world and studied math and statistics at an early age, it is difficult to imagine a world in which objective measurement, inquisitiveness (vs. inquisition), and doubt are not natural and allowed. How could Galileo be persecuted for stating what anyone could observe? How can what is happening in the world not be true because it has not been part of the past?

I suspect that post-positivist thinking moved the western and eastern worlds into the modern age. As we allowed people to ask questions and change the current structure of society and knowledge, we discover valuable laws, materials, and applications that transform society. Who would suspect that sand could become silicon? Without the transformation all human have to work with are sand, beaches, dirt mounts. With the transformation, sand becomes silicon, computer, and knowledge transfer. The whole world changes because are willing to change the use of sand.

We own progress to new uses of oil, wood, metal, atoms, chemicals, bacteria, etc. Inquiry, questioning, measuring, experimenting. All of these lead to a new understanding of the world. All of these lead to a new experience of the world. This leads to a new human place in the world.

I think we are very lucky to be able to think qualitatively. For some reason we seem to be the only species on earth that can think like this. We do not have competition for thinking, creating, changing. Humans in Boston, Bombay, Sydney, Moscow, London, and Tokyo all compete with each other in understanding and changing the world. But all of them are working to change it in a way that benefits most humans. Imagine if we were competing with dolphins in this thinking race. They would certainly have an entirely different take on what is important in the world. Imagine dolphin sewage being thrust up onto the shores of California. Imagine the Florida Keys being leveled to an altitude of 30 feet below sea level to make room for coral farming in the area. That kind of competition would be very different from what exists purely between humans today. What if the dolphins began mining for metals from the ocean inward beneath New York City? We may find them pulling out human plumbing, subway metals, and skyscraper infrastructure to build their own structures in the sea.

We are lucky to have quantitative thinking … and very lucky that other species do not have it as well.

Qualitative

2005-09-22T11:43:00.000-04:00

Qualitative research is associated with the quality of an attribute or question. Usually means a property that cannot be measured with a stick. Such as “How happy are you?” or “What is the meaning of family?” These questions are important for understanding people and society. Though I might not be able to measure the intensity of the happy neuron firings in the brain, there should still be a way to study it and to construct measures of it.

One of the most prevalent social structures is the business enterprise. A company, corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship is a social organization based around exchange of goods and services. These exchanges and the support functions throughout the organization are teaming with social interactions and human emotions. The manager, especially the first line manager, often finds herself awash in a sea of human and group issues that stem from these interactions. Therefore, applying qualitative research to business problems is essential. There are probably more issues and dynamics involving humans than there are involving machinery, materials, or money. None of these have feelings, aspirations, or health issues. They either function well, poorly, or not at all. They do not function well, but with a bad mood. Nor do they operate flawlessly for an operator they like and stubbornly resist an operator that has offended them.

Qualitative research may still be struggling for the respect it hopes for, or maybe it is still earning the respect that will eventually be due to it. Perhaps it is emerging from the quantitative base of science in the same way that science emerged from the positivist base of society. Just as positivists opposed the scientific method and quantitative questioning, the quantitativists may be resisting the ideas of the qualitativists. New ideas always threaten the established society. Without those ideas, the society had to construct a pattern and norms that worked. Once a new idea is added, there are new ingredients that can construct new patterns and norms that will work as well. However, if you do not understand the new idea, then all of this restructuring seems only to be an attempt to break the current patterns and move to patterns that have “already been shown to fail”. It really requires an understanding of the new idea to be able to understand why new patterns that include it will work.

I do not think that societies operate as a unified giant brain in making decisions to protect the status quo or opposing new patterns. Instead, each reacts to the new idea and shares its beliefs through a social network. Many reactions attempt to influence their own networks. All of these networks overlap and create complex combinations of reaction. Therefore, it is always difficult to impossible to address issues that are raised because they come from all directions and interact to generate new and different issues.

The qualitativist must be able to function in an environment that is slightly hostile. Perhaps this time has passed and there are solid communities in which qualitative methods are integrated and accepted. Certainly, the business research field should be one of these communities. Business seems to be a place where mixed methods should be very useful.

Literature Review

2005-09-21T16:19:00.000-04:00

How do you wander the digital stacks? I found a book on the History of Mathematics while wandering the stacks of a university library. Who would have even suspected that such a book existed … certainly not a 19 year-old kid doing his homework. The digital library is a powerful tool, but it does not allow wandering very well. When we search we find lots of “near hits” that are similar to wandering. So perhaps it is not less accessible, but merely differently accessible.

When reviewing the literature how do you really do it? You begin will two things (1) keywords, and (2) your own books. The keywords will tell you what to search for. This will pull in a broad set of materials. The books you already own will give you references that others have used. These are the focused results of other researchers. They should help you focus and dig deeper by author, institution, or specific jargon terms that you do not know yet. (I just learned about service-based learning from an AOM journal.)

Ideas do not grow on trees or even in individual minds. Most of us are too stupid to create something really brilliant. So we make up for it by studying the ideas of a hundred other fellow idiots and finding some way to contribute a verse. This is not an insult, it is just an acknowledgement of the Bell curve. It is crowded in the middle and sparse on the leading edge. Like a bureaucracy we are harnessing the mediocre talent of the masses to carry on a mission that is too big for individuals. Thank heavens for the middle of the Bell curve. We are the ones who pool our strengths to build something that is truly big and enduring … even though it will rule over us once constructed.

I am willing to review literature to collect the gems from the masses and the leaders and try to make one contribution. Studying the thoughts of others can also teach us to think better than we do now. The masses at the trailing edge get all of their thinking patterns for TV, we have to go to a better source if we want better patterns.

The how of literature review is less important than just doing it. Jump in with both hands, both feet, and both brain lobes … the water is rich.

Dissertation

2005-09-19T16:18:00.000-04:00

What is a dissertation? I think it is a formal proof of contribution to the knowledge of human society. Certainly the Wright Brothers made a concrete contribution with the aircraft, but they did not get a Ph.D. for it. But they were followed by thousands of aeronautical students who received a Ph.D. for examining the dynamics of flight and publishing a document on it. Those documents promoted the science of flight and may be embedded in the Concord, F-16, and Boeing 777. But no one sees those contributions. We see Orville Wright, John Glen, Howard Hughes, and Ramos. These are the hands on people, no the “heads on” people.

Dissertation … valuable? I think it is more an opportunity for the student to test his mental metal. He can dig deeply into a subject and really master something. This may be more depth and mastery than he or she will ever accomplish in hisher life again. Perhaps professors or research lab scientists may get to repeat the experience more than once, but most of us are headed for a once in a lifetime experience. I think we should pick something that is rewarding and personally valuable, something we can have pride in for decades. Choosing a topic that will pass is certainly practical, but is it what doctoral study is all about? Perhaps there is too much emphasis on being accepted, which may be an expression of the university protecting its own reputation and the status quo. No one wants to cheapen the process or degree, but perhaps acceptance by one’s peers is not the only way to contribute. Hmmm … that is true, but it might just point the student to another avenue of contribution. Perhaps he should go and invent the next graviton propulsion system rather than proving the existence of gravitons in his dissertation.

I am not afraid of this process. I am more afraid of the biases of the professors who will be involved. We all see the world uniquely, but they have the power in the relationship and I have the position of being molded into a proper doctor.

Many of us are gong through this so we can be Dr. X. That has value in society and in our own minds (which are a reflection of societal values). But, the knowledge we acquire is another kind of value. Option 1: Dr. Hamm may become an assistant to the secretary of defense and never need his doctoral knowledge. Option 2: Dr. Hamm may work for the office of management and budget and create an entirely new organizational structure for government professionals. That is all about the doctoral knowledge.

I think the greatest part is that we do not stop learning and we do not limit ourselves. Keep moving, the specter of death is at your heals. When you lay down to sleep, he draws that much closer.

Survey

2005-09-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

Who invested the survey? Surely the roots are in the census of ancient people’s. Remember the cause of the Biblical nativity scene? Mary and Joseph were called to Bethlehem for a survey conducted by XXX. They were essentially being counted. But were they also classified by sex, age, race, ancestry, town of origin, and current place of residence? That is a really interesting question. What became of those records or those of other censuses? Imagine a Dan Brown novel in which an archeologist discovers the actual census records of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. What kind of twists could go into that?

At its roots a survey is an easy as asking questions and ticking off the answers on a roll of papyrus. However, what if you ask the questions wrong? Or what if you do not ask the right people? Then the answers you get represent a skewed sub-culture of the actual population. If you just ask all males what their favorite sport is, then the results are not going to represent the US. Football will probably be much more prevalent in that survey than is really characteristic of the US population.

Another way to skew the survey is to ask the survey question in the wrong way. “How many times a week do you beat your wife?” is probably not going to lead to answers that are a true reflection of social behavior. Getting at an issue like that requires a great deal of creativity and validation.

Some populations are self-selecting. In the Biblical example we assume that everyone was asked to report to the city of their birth. Do you think everyone actually went? Certainly not. Many are too poor, frail, ill, afraid of bandits, apathetic, busy, or enslaved to actually comply. The population who show up are self-selecting. There is already a bias built into this crowd. This would be like conducting a survey in a shopping mall in which you ask how often people buy clothing. This population is already predisposed to go to a shopping site, so their answers should be suspect if considered a fair assessment of the population.

Why survey at all? Why not collect data and use that to calculate the information you are looking for. For example, all credit card receipts can match credit score, home address, mortgage, and the stores shopped in. This is a wealth of information. This is great, but it does not tell us how the shoppers feel about the lighting in the mall or the composition of the stores available, or how many hours they spend shopping each week. Information like this is harder to get. However, the day is coming (very close to here now) when everyone’s cell phone will operate as a geographic location/tracking device. These records can then be used to track the movement of anyone at all times. Now we know how long people spend shopping. What a huge data set this will be. (WILL BE … not could be, or might be).

This type of progress is another instance in the depersonalization of society. It is one less activity that requires face-to-face, human-to-human interaction. Perhaps in the future we will be so starved for human contact that we will pay extra for anything involving the human touch …. $100 for an exam by a robot, $200 for an exam by a human doctor.

What has this all to do with surveys? Not as much as I had hoped … oh well, the dangers of the free writing mind. I think that new Dan Brown novel at the beginning is a million dollar idea.

Infinity

2005-09-17T15:47:00.000-04:00

Where is the infinite? It seems to lie in two directions simultaneously – outer space and inner molecules. Capt. Kirk and Star Trek were some of the first to point us to deep outer space, to venture far beyond our own solar system and galaxy. In fact, it was not until sometime in the 20th century that we even knew that there was more than our own galaxy. Kirk, Spock, Nimoy, and the numerous “Red Shirts” took us to a new planet every week, sometimes two, and demonstrated that creates there were strange and familiar. They were like us because we imagined them. But they were unlike us because we did our best to make them unique. Opening this doorway to thought leads to the question – how many stars, planets, and creatures can possibly exist in the universe? Is the answer 1, 100, or 1 million? So far we are still wondering about that question. Is there any reason that the number of stars and planets cannot be infinite? Is there a number so large that it is the same as infinity for all practical purposes (like Bill Gates’ net worth)?

The second direction seems to be downward into the animal cell and the structure of atoms. The universe seems to exist in their in exactly the same way it exists in outer space. Atoms look like little galaxies or solar systems. But, kids now learn that electrons are probability spaces and not little tiny planets orbiting the nucleus. They also learn that the electron field is not a sphere around the nucleus, but is a space that is shaped by the other atoms in its vicinity. This tiny inner infinity is complex, and the more complex it becomes, the more it looks like the giant outer infinity.

Is infinity useful? It is more than I can eat, own, earn, or carry. I understand that ancient man had a very primitive counting system that went something like “none”, 1, 2, “many”. If you had more than 2 of anything you were rich to the point that it was not necessary to count it all. I might have nothing, one for myself, one for me and one for you, or more than that. 3 or 30 were both the same. How can this primitive person use infinity? Today we count things a little higher – and usually focus on our money. I might have 1 dollar, 100, 1000, or 100,000. We can count as high as we like and there are two numbers that we are particularly interested in – one million and one billion. When we make our first million we begin to hope to be rich. When we make our first billion, then we have made it. Is anyone concerned with trillion? It appears that only the computer people are looking that high. The storage on a hard drive, the RAM in a computer, and the operations per second – these are all interested in trillions and higher.

Infinity … does anyone really care?

Error

2005-09-16T15:47:00.000-04:00

To error is to make a mistake, to fall short of the correct answer, to violate a norm or standard. In like we speak of errors of commission and errors of omission. The first means that we have actively done something that was wrong. The second means that we have not done something that we should have done, a passive error.

An active error is usually thought more severe than a passive one. It take decision, where a passive error requires only indecision (which may be mistaken an ignorance).

In science we speak of Type I and Type II errors. The first is the error of rejecting an idea that is true. When Columbus (and others) suggested that the Earth was round, those who rejected his ideas committed a Type I error. They allowed the truth to slip away because they were wed to a mistaken historical belief that the world was flat. However, in accepting that the Earth was flat, they committed a Type II error. In this case it is possible to commit a Type I and a Type II error almost simultaneously. However, in truth, these people were making two different decisions. The first was to reject an accurate theory (round Earth). They may have stopped there and maintained the score at “Truth 0, Ignorance 1”. This would mean that they simply admitted that they do not know how the world is shaped – round, flat, pyramidal, or dodecahedron. If they continued to choose the shape of the earth and maintained that it was flat, then they separately committed the Type II error – leading to a score of “Truth 0, Ignorance 2”.

In science we try to protect against making either kind of error. We would prefer to say “I do not know” rather than making either type of mistake – “Truth 0, Ignorance 0”. I suppose this means we are as committed to not making mistakes as we are to finding the truth. We would prefer to know nothing than to know anything incorrectly. This attitude would be unique to scientists. Most people what a body of truth to hold on to and guide their thinking, regardless of whether it is right or wrong. It is more important to have something than nothing. Being wrong with confidence is a more preferable situation than being confident that we do not know.

Most people exhibit this bond with error in their daily lives. The best example is every listener who calls into a radio talk show to air their opinions. These listeners are eager to demonstrate to the world that they confidently believe in dozens fo false notions about the world. It seems the more ignorant they are, the more certain they are that their opinion is true. (Hence, the insistence on first-names-only over the air.)

Perhaps one cannot learn to avoid errors without fist learning enough to be comfortable in a morass of good, bad, and null information. Given only two pieces of data or two perspectives on a question, most people are happy to pick one, any one will do. However, with much more study it becomes clear that there are many more than two positions. A complex issue with n variables would have 2n positions if n can only take the values of “true” and “false”. If n is a continuous variable, then the number of combinations of n become infinite. Even grouping these into meaningful breaks can lead to n times a dozen or a hundred variations. Faced with so many options, it becomes much easier to hold off on a decision.

The vaccine against error seems to be knowledge. Knowledge may make a person smart enough to avoid choosing the wrong position (Type II). But it also allows the freedom to choose no position, but to hold many possibilities in consideration. How many dogmas contain this as their central approach to belief?

Deduction

2005-09-15T07:04:00.000-04:00

Look at the big picture of a situation and infer from that what some fine details must have been. Anthropologists look at the bones of a dinosaur and deduce what it must have eaten, in spite of the fact that there are no clues in the fossils themselves. The teeth, the claws, the posture and provide clues to some other fact that cannot be measured directly. They arrive at their understanding of the dietary habits by deduction.

The most famous “deducer” was probably Sherlock Holmes, legendary thinker, but not a real person. “Elementary my dear Watson” is a statement know by millions and its meaning is understood. Arthur Conan Doyle created a character with prodigious powers of thought. He had built a person store of knowledge that was vast and eclectic. This he applied to crime scenes and people to deduce facts that others could not perceive.

In an earlier post I discussed the need for induction because people experience the world in small pieces that they must draw meaning from. Like Holmes, this information becomes the knowledge from which deduction can take place. It seems to be a cycle of thought that begins with perception and is followed by induction. The knowledge built by these is then available for deduction on later problems.

Deduction is a higher form of thought. It is not directed by a set of immediately perceived information. Instead, the deducer must select for himself what knowledge is applicable in the process of deducing specifics from a general observation, thought, or theory. This would imply that deduction is open to many more avenues of approach. Deduction can be driven by the historical experience and accumulation of the person doing it. Induction is more reactive to the immediate perception and is more likely to proceed along a similar path for all individuals. Because deduction can follow so many different paths, it should be a technique that leads to many more different inquiries, discoveries, and mistakes than does induction.

In a Sherlock Holmes story, he, Watson, and Inspector Lestrade all arrive at different conclusion when presented with similar evidence. In the stories this is because Holmes is brilliant, Watson is practical, and Lestrade is a dullard. In practice this should be driven much more by the knowledge available to each and the disciplined techniques that each has developed to apply that knowledge. Perhaps Holmes was the fictional equivalent of Einstein and the power of his mind far surpassed that of any others in police work. But, the brain falls under the normal distribution. Most of us are equipped with nearly the same brainpower. We have similar raw capabilities and can each conquer similar problems. The differences in our line of thought are probably due more to the knowledge we have stocked up and a certain amount of luck in sifting and organizing that knowledge. The power of the individual brain is much like that of its neighbors.

Concept

2005-09-12T22:49:00.000-04:00

“Jim, what is your concept for the new building?”

“Well, Joe, I think the new building should be of green glass, multi-storied and taper to an off-center point at the top. We want something very distinctive for our customers to recognize us by.”

“Thank you Jim, that is a very clear concept you have there.”

So a concept must be an idea, a visualization, a structured way of understanding something. How is it different from an idea? Perhaps a concept is something that has been thought theory. It has relationships internally and externally. It seems to stand-up and be meaningful in the context of its surroundings. It is more that some wild idea, some wandering thought. It has been created, tested, justified – though not necessarily proven. There are many ideas, like Jim’s thought about a building a new office that are not “proofable”. They are structured thoughts about the world and they fit logically into a mental model of the world.

Concept … conceive … create … structured belief system … ideas getting ready for a proof … seeds of a theory … baby born of mental effort to organize the world … adolescent who might become an adult theory some day.

The mental pool has run dry on this concept.

Theory

2005-09-11T22:48:00.000-04:00

Theory is a structured and substantiatible form of belief. It is view of the world that is supported by experimentation and founded on other established views of the world. Is a theory true? No, a theory is something that has not been proved to be false yet. It is something that might be true, that may have been observed to be true in a limited number of circumstances. Theory allows us to convert a question into something that is structured enough to be able to pursue knowledge about whether the idea or question is true.

In daily life do we have theories? Yes, we all have our theories about our own health, diet, relationships, how the grass grows, and a hundred other experiences. These “theories” are generally less structured than those used in research and scientific investigation. In many cases, theories are our own method of holding onto to beliefs that we are not sure are true and that we may never make the effort to prove are true. In labeling them theories, we admit that we are not sure about them, and we may also continue to believe them for years without ever taking any action to prove their validity. We may just wait until new knowledge falls into our laps or we stumble into experiences that prove that the theory is not true.

These theories may be nothing more than ignorance of how the real world works. People have believed that the moon causes warts and that stress causes ulcers. These theories may be held and acted on for decades or even centuries without serious attempts to determine whether they are true or not. In that case, is a “personal theory” really a theory if there is no attempt to determine its validity? Do these attempts have to be formal? Or is the process of living and comparing experiences to internal theories a form of experimentation and revalidation?

Induction

2005-09-10T08:07:00.000-04:00

In life we experience the world in small pieces. We see one rabbit, then two, then three. We begin to build a stereotype of what a rabbit it. It is a model for all future rabbits. Our mind (might) begin to erase the features of each individual rabbit and replace them with those of the model rabbit. Perhaps, the model rabbit is at the core of our memories and meaning for all rabbits. Significant individual rabbits are then remembered as variations off of the model. In constructing the model rabbit we have conducted rabbit induction, we have generalized from the specific to the universal.

Because humans see the world in small pieces like his, it seems to me that induction is the major approach that we would take to managing our own knowledge about the world. It is a means of reducing the amount of detail that we remember and creating a map of the world that is more organized and easier to deal with. For example, if we see a brown rabbit named Chocolate eat a carrot we know that Chocolate likes carrots. Then we wonder whether the white rabbit named Snowflake likes carrots. We feed Snowflake a carrot and discover that it too like carrots. We now have two pieces of information. If we have a dozen rabbits, do we have to experiment with each of them to discover that each likes carrots? If we do this and get a positive answer on each, do we then store this information a dozen times in our brains? If so, then we are implying that we must experiment on every rabbit before we could possibly know whether each likes carrots? This is a lot of memory storage and a lot of experimentation to be able to deal with the world. This is where we need induction. We need a tool to help us reduce repetitive work and to make room in our minds for other information. Dr. Watson once mentioned the Prime Minister to Sherlock Holmes. To which Holmes said “Who?” Watson was incredulous that Holmes would not know this. Holmes explained that the mind is like an attic. There is a limited amount of space and one has to be careful what one puts up there. One should only remember the important and essential things. Since the Prime Minister’s name was of no use to Holmes in solving crimes, it was a useless piece of information to him and was ejected from his attic mind in favor of understanding the chemical properties of blood (or some such tidbit).

Harrison argued that induction was an improper way to do science. In the first chapter he explains his reasoning. But he does not provide a solid alternative. This idea is too radical to accept from one chapter. Since people experience the world in small pieces, I think induction is their primary tool of understanding the world at large. In fact, today, I think that deduction is really a later phase of thinking that is enabled only after lots of induction has taken place. One cannot deduce from the general without having used induction to create an understanding of the general in the first place.

It will be interesting to see what alternative Harrison can provide in later chapters.

It occurs to me that most of our language is based on induction. Without induction there is no such thing as “rabbit”, there are only Chocolate, Snowflake, and a million other unique animals.

Freewriting

2005-09-08T07:07:00.000-04:00

Freewriting is the practice of writing constantly without stopping, without interruption, and with the goal of creating a stream of thoughts from the mind to the fingers to the paper (wooden or digital). How does this process work? In theory, it allows ideas to be captured without judgment and editing. It reveals what the writer really thinks about a subject and not what he/she is supposed to think (like writing “he/she” rather than “he”). It has only been two weeks, but it appears to work … to some degree.

There is a difference as Dr Field claimed between handwriting and typewriting. In hand writing the mind is actually a little further ahead of the hand in capturing ideas, so there is some time to prepare an idea before it is put down on paper. However, when handwriting, the brain is busy moving the muscles of the hand and seems to be less inclined evaluate ideas consciously. So the part of the brain that is evaluating ideas is less conscious than when typewriting. When typing on the computer, the brain is must more free to mess with the ideas as they are born. So, the dialog is a little more stilted and halting. Also, through years of practice the hands and eyes have been taught to spot and correct typographical errors as they hit the page. Therefore, the reflex to hit the “backspace” key happens almost automatically. It is must more difficult to leave things as they fall. Also, the eye is constantly being queued by the red squiggly lines under “bad” words on the page. The computer is telling you that you have made a mistake … and you had better correct it right away.

Does this process reveal new thoughts to the writer himself (or more politically correct “themselves” or him or herself). In some cases, yes. However, in most cases it simply forces the mind to organize ideas that have floated in the mind without structure. Thoughts are much less concrete and organized that everyone believes of themselves. What you know is hidden in a mist of chemical slush. Those thoughts appear to be organized and expressed only on demand. When not called for they remain a floating mess, like the floor in my daughters’ rooms. So, freewriting (and writing of any form), forces the mind to organize thoughts and to put them in a form that is more solid and permanently expressive. What they say is often surprising, though not necessarily completely unknown to the writer.

Do I edit my thoughts in spite of the freewriting rules? Certainly. There are some thoughts that are so socially unacceptable, that we constantly guard against expressing them. Religion, morals, and society try to teach us not to have such thoughts, but they really succeed in teaching us to suppress them. The act of freewriting often skirts dangerously close to allowing ideas to escape, whose very existence is denied. These may range from the criminal to the simply rude. Like Jeckle and Hyde, every man (woman) is filled with the juices of good and evil. Some people simply are not interested in really evil things, so they are mild. However, others are not interested in good, so they become outwardly vile. In a doctoral program, I would expect mostly mild people (except Kathie who is a rabid Steelers fan who has been taught to love violence as entertainment … oops, who let that thought out … get back in your cage rude dog).

So, will the class and I continue freewriting when this cource is over? No of course not. In general, this is homework, not a lifestyle. However, we will be equipped with an invaluable tool. When writing our dissertations we will face many periods of writers’ block. Hopefully, this practice will have taught us to “let go” and let the internal mind stream thoughts to paper. Such a practice may be uncontrolled, unmanaged, but it is not evil and wrong. It is not simple blather that comes out. The mind is often filled with ideas ready for capture, but the mental filters are keeping them from emerging. Remove he filters and let the ideas out. Then you can look at them later. You have 30 minutes to spend on your dissertation … is it better to stare in frustration at a blank page or to release the hounds and let a stream of any wild ideas come out? In both cases, the 30 minutes will be gone. In one you will have a very well guarded piece of white paper, in the other you will have a quagmire of ideas, which will have some gems in it.

Freewriting is mining the mind.

Culture

2005-09-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

Culture … do I have any? Culture is a name for the shared values and behaviors of a group of people. People in a small town share values and behaviors that would in their environment, that allow them to function, live together, and honor or hide their past. In the city, the same is true. But what works in one place will not work in another. I have lived in 7 different towns and found that the culture in each is noticeably different.

In Holly and Lamar, Colorado, the very noticeable feature of the culture is the obsession with rain. Those communities are dependent on dry land wheat farming to maintain their economy. They are farming in an area that receives very little rain. Therefore, the fixation of most people is on how much rain has fallen in the last month – usually measured in a fraction of an inch because it seldom rains an entire inch in one month. They get very excited when they receive 1/10th of an inch of rain in an evening. Another part of the culture is the focus on beef at the dinner table. The area also raises cattle and as a result, most families serve beef as the main course of every meal. There are occasional chicken dishes (usually fried chicken), but the ratio is around 6:1 in favor of beef.

In Pueblo, Colorado, the focus was on steel production, consumption, importation. In the late 1970’s the city’s economy was largely based on the steel mill in the middle of the old part of town. It provided the major source of jobs and union-level incomes. The steel mill also perfumed the entire city with a stench of sulfur mixed with metal. On good days the wind would blow the smell away from the city. On bad days, the smell would drift lazily over the entire city giving everyone a sour nose and face. Stories were told of workers who showed up at the steel plant driving a Japanese car (usually a Honda). By the end of the day, the car was vandalized because it represented a threat to the consumption of American steel production.

Lubbock, Texas, is known by the old song “happiness is Lubbock, Texas in your rear-view mirror”. The town has very little to boast about in terms of history or economic power. It is home to Texas Tech University and is surrounded by cotton fields. Lubbock sustains a strong vein of Texas Pride. There is great meaning in being from Texas, in Texas, part of Texas, and just Texan in general. Cowboy boots, Wrangler jeans (no other brand), Justin boots, Stetson hats, and large rodeo belt buckles are the height of fashion at any social occasion.

In Fort Worth, Texas, there is a preoccupation with maintaining the image of a cowboy town. They wanted to make sure that they were not confused with nearby Dallas. They had no intention of being seen as a small version of that metroplex, so they cultivated the cowboy culture to the point of nicknaming themselves Cowtown. Many of the city’s events were called the Cowtown Classic Bicycle Race, Cowtown Rodeo, etc. The cultural center of the city was in the old Stockyards where Bill Bob’s Bar was a famous spot to be visited by all locals and tourists.

Manassas, Virginia is the home of the Civil War’s First and Second Battles of Manassas. In the North these are better known as the Battles of Bull Run. The South named battles by the cities they were fought near. The North named them by geographic feature like rivers and hills. Tales are told of the citizens of Manassas taking picnic lunches to the tops of near-by hills to watch the battles from a safe distance. Like much of Virginia, Manassas is very focused on history – as long as that history happened during the Civil War and features a prominent role for the South. The area is also dominated with government contracting, largely defense. This dovetails nicely with their interest in the Civil War. Attending the Reenactment at Haystack, VA is a “must do” event in the area.

In Orlando, Florida you must take a stand on two issues. First, whether you are for the UF Gators or the FSU Seminoles. This will influence your social circles and the places you are allowed to watch football on the big screen. Second, you have to love Disney or ignore it (but you are not allowed to hate it). Orlando is the second or third most popular vacation spot in the world – surpassed only by Rome and Mecca. The other two are the centers of major world religions, which must make Orlando the center of the American Happiness religion. The economy is diverse, but largely focused on tourism that is here to see Disney World. There are certainly other attractions, but these are what you fit into your major 4-day trip to Disney parks. Universal, Sea World, a number of water parks, nearby beaches, Citywalk, Downtown Disney, Pleasure Island, Cirque du Solei, and several others collect the dropping from the Disney table. There are also a few thousand hotels and restaurants that rest and feed the hordes headed into Disney.

Behind the one or two major features of each city listed are hundreds of more subtle behaviors that are linked to these or that play a symbiotic role. But, each city has its own unique culture. Most Americans (except New Yorkers) can adapt to these cultures and find ways to fit in and function effectively. One of the defining features of America itself is its willingness to adopt and adapt. We are a mobile culture so we are an accepting culture … except for New Yorkers.

Science

2005-09-06T06:49:00.000-04:00

Science is the organized pursuit of knowledge. Just like the knowledge it creates, science is an evolving practice. It has taken centuries to invent the scientific process, to identify the difference between random thinking and tinkering and solid scientific inquiry. Recognizing that some processes are flawed, how they are flawed, and how to prevent these flaws has been a struggle in itself. In addition to discovering electricity, the motion of the planets, and the biological processes of life – we also had to discover the methods and tools for discovering these.

There is a certainly lot of life without science. All forms of professions can be carried out without science … farming, insurance, mortgage lending, construction, etc. But, we have discovered that with science all of these can be performed better. Science can aid us in planting at the right time, avoiding diseases, destroying pests, and creating hybrids of seeds and animals that are more hearty and productive.

Bill Nye the Science Guy is a typical image of a scientists – a little geeky, excited about strange things, and wearing a white lab coat. This image separates him from the rest of society, and in many ways separates science from the rest of society. But, in fact science completely permeates our lives from the cereal we have for breakfast to the satellite television we watch before bed. It should be impossible for children to say “how will I ever use math and science in the real world”. As consumers it is possible to avoid using math and science. But as a creator of the world as it is now and as it will be in the future, it is very difficult not to stir the pot of science.

Sit in an office and try not to use the computer or the Internet. If you don’t invest these (science), then you are a consumer. There was a time when everyone was a farmer and everyone participated in the creation of goods. Few were pure consumers. Everyone understood the husbandry of the land and of animals. Those people were the seeds from which science emerged… they were producers. Every profession is responsible for the creation of some good or service, though not all require the application of science. All of them somewhere in their roots contain science. Without science, all of the things we do and use every day would be much less efficient. Without actuarial mathematics it would still be possible to sell insurance. But, it would be a much more risky business. Without construction engineering and materials science, it would still be possible to construct a house … but not a skyscraper.

Daniel Bell pointed out that the modern progress of industrial societies was largely due to two professions … the engineer and the financier. The former allowed us to create incredible new products. The latter made it possible to finance major projects that could take advantage of new discoveries.

It is probably not a coincidence that university graduate schools have a huge market for engineering and management courses and have had to create adult education formats (night, weekend, and Internet classes) to meet the demand. But, there has been no similar demand for other subjects.

Economy of the Florida Keys

2005-09-05T09:01:00.000-04:00

The Florida Keys is one of America’s prime vacation spots. But, strangely, the economy these is a mess. It looks like a third-world country. The entire string of islands has a “keysy” feel. This means laid back and painted lime green, peach, and yellow. In general it has a feel similar to the Bahamas or coastal Mexico. In spite of the fact that thousands of people travel there for vacation every year and many conferences are held on the islands, the economy is predominantly poor. There are a few luxurious resorts mixed with many mid-range resorts. But very low quality, low cost hotels and restaurants dominate the islands. I have vacationed there at least 8 times and always find it difficult to find a nice hotel or a good place to eat dinner.

What is wrong with this economy? I think they have failed to open the Keys to mid-range hotel development. Instead, a great deal of the precious land they have to offer has been consumed in two ways. The first is the “old keys”. These are the low class hotels, trailer parks, boat ramps, greasy spoons, and dive shops that took over the islands in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The second are the very high-class vacation homes and condominiums.

The first draw fishermen and divers who are traveling on a budget. They want to practice their sport, drink beer, and eat their catch. These people can only support lower cost attractions. They are more likely to eat in a bar, fast food, or a greasy spoon. They require support in the form of boat ramps, fishing tackle, taxidermy, and boat rental.

The second take the most precious resource that the Keys have and build a luxury home on it. The construction of these homes pulls in the tradesmen who make very small salaries for their work. Once completed, the homes then become vacation spots for the rich people who own them. These people spend 1 to 4 weeks in them each year. The rest of the time these homes are unoccupied. This state requires some grounds maintenance and security to maintain the property.

Neither of these classes of “businesses” in the Keys generates a really vibrant economy. They do not put the resources of the islands to use for either production or significant consumption. When all of land is sold for luxury homes, that land does not produce anything. Because the owners are seldom present, it also accounts for little consumption. Therefore, once sold and developed, the Keys lose a resource and gain little in return.

The Keys would have a much more vibrant and rich economy if they would use their resources for production or higher-end consumption. There is little aquaculture in the Keys. They do not farm sea plants or fish there. Both of these would create businesses that could bring a constant stream of outside revenue into the islands.

They should also invest in attractions that would bring down a higher-class of vacationer. They need more mid-level hotels and activities for these people to participate in. These hotels could generate twice the room rates of the current low-end properties that dominate the islands. The customers would also be able to afford more expensive activities. This would allow the creation of malls and entertainment venues. The property for these would have to be transformed from the existing low-end hotels and restaurants.

I think Las Vegas, Orlando, and Phoenix would be good models for the Keys to look to for their future style. Each of these has attempted to create a strong economy based on tourism. However, all three have the significant advantage of nearly unlimited real estate to work with. In Orlando when one area becomes rundown or has an outdated style, the business people simply move to open territory and create an entirely new experience. Kissimmee and Church Street Station are part of the old Orlando that has been pushed aside and replaced with Downtown Disney and Universal Citywalk.

The Keys may be locked into their low-end vacation status. The resource may be committed such that there is no way to redevelop them into a new experience. There is nothing particularly wrong with that. The biggest downside is that most of the residents of the Keys have few opportunities to advance themselves. They must remain content to captain an old snorkel boat or serve in an old hotel where there is little or no chance for financial advancement.

Progress

2005-09-01T22:42:00.000-04:00

The railroad, telegraph, Internet, computer, space flight, automobile … all of these represent progress. Academics have created categories of progress – Pre-agrarian, Agriculture, Industrial, and Information ages. Each of these is meant to emphasize that in certain periods progress seemed to cluster and accelerate in specific areas. Agriculture made it possible for one farmer to feed many people. Industrial progress made it possible for one blacksmith to shoe all of the horses in town. Information progress makes it possible for one accountant to manage all of the financials of a company. In this way progress is a tool toward efficiency. But, in addition to this, progress makes it possible to avoid starvation, lack of housing, and lack of knowledge about diseases. If progress did not generate efficiency in business, it would still generate a social good. It would move mankind from the cave to the condominium. It would raise life expectancy from 40 years to 75 years. This is a great thing for the individual, but what does it mean to society as a whole. What is the impact of an experienced 40-year-old farmer, miner, or doctor remaining alive and active for another 30 years? This provides a huge boost to the collective memory and ability of a society. A little progress enables a lot more. As a doctor comes to understand how to treat people, he is also able to perfect new techniques and tools and to practice with those long enough to master them. His or her knowledge can then be passed on in the form of writings that he/she may have the time and money to generate.

Progress is the striving for something better. Once a society tastes the benefits of a little progress, it is easy to get them to pursue more. Progress provides more money, more physical assets, more knowledge, and more freedom to indulge in what is precious in life, which is sometimes the pursuit of more progress.

Is progress different from knowledge? Is it possible to attain new knowledge and withhold it from circulation and application so that it does not generate progress? Is progress managed and directed? Certainly it is. Government, social structures, and individuals all work to create progress, but they also work to control it and direct it toward ends that appear valuable and away from ends that appear dangerous.

The atomic bomb was developed during a time of war. If the world had not been at war at just the right time when atomic knowledge was coming together, would anyone have ever invested the incredible amount of money and effort necessary to bring atomic weapons into existence? One could ask the same of space flight. Kennedy was able to mobilize the money and minds of the American people toward spaceflight and a trip to the moon because we were ideologically threatened by the Soviets. If the Soviets had not threatened us, would we ever have been able to pull this off? I think … No.

Look at the history of NASA and space exploration since the demise of the Soviet race for space. Have we gone beyond the moon? Where are the great missions to Mars and the outer planets? We have settled into the pattern of sending machines to planets while we all stay home. It appears that since the Soviets or Chinese do not want to go to Mars, then we don’t either.

If the Germans did not want an atomic weapon during WWII, then perhaps we would not have wanted one either. Or at least not badly enough to spend the money necessary to do it. It might have taken another 50 years to gradually sneak up on the creation of the nuclear weapon.

Perhaps all progress requires competition. If man is not competing against another man or against nature, then there is no motivation or reason to move forward. Agriculture and industry were means of overcoming a lack of food and a lack of natural resources. But, once we have everything we need from nature we look to other people to determine what we want, based on what they want.

It seems that the current frontier for progress is medicine. What one thing does nature have that we want control of? Death. We are tired of dying when some disease or infirmity decides that it is time to go. We want to stay until we are finished with life. I wonder when that would be. If possible to live forever, would anyone ever choose to self-terminate? Or is there a place in time and longevity when a man or woman simply says, “I am finished, goodbye.” Perhaps we will have the opportunity to find out within the next 100 years.

Truth

2005-08-31T07:07:00.000-04:00

Is there an absolute truth? In physics there is. In chemistry, biology, mathematics there is. So, is there absolute truth in business? Yes, in small nuggets there must be. There may be no grand unified field theory of business, but there certainly should be small vignettes in which a theory can be established and hold fast.

Why would we search for truth? Is truth better than falsity? Can a business or a person function better when equipped with truth than when equipped with false ideas? Yes. Do we search for truth solely because we have found that those who possess the most truth have a better experience with the world? That experience might be profits and superior products in business. It might be relationships and respect in interpersonal dealings. It might be a progression of thought in intellectual pursuits. Or do we pursue truth because humans have some internal compass that points them in that direction? In any filed or any question there are a large number of false positions, but only one or a few true positions. Do we value these like we value gems? Digging through the earth the miner finds granite, dirt, and quartz. The quartz is valuable because it is unique and rare. But then the miner uncovers an emerald, ruby, or sapphire and his perspective on value changes. Do people value truth because it is so rare? Yes, this sounds better than the rest.

In an intellectual career, truth provides a foundation from which to build more ideas. Imagine trying to build such a foundation on falsities, and doing that on purpose. A scientist knows that something is false, but explores its properties and relationships with the world. Then he uses that as a foundation for another study that is false. How far can this line of questioning lead? Within a few steps or layers, it must die out. Eventually, there are no more false ideas connected to the false ideas you started with. Also, since there are an uncountable number of falsities, this line of questioning is not rare. Everyone can do this equally well. Finally, the understanding of false propositions would not be useful in a practical way. It may be interesting, but it would not have practical application except as a means of failing.

Truth is valuable because it leads to a working understanding of the world. It does equip the knower with an ability that others do not have. Does truth make one wise? I think they are two different things. Truth is an understanding of what is. Wisdom may be an understanding of how to use knowledge – and how NOT to use knowledge.

What will the pursuit of truth do to a person? How will someone who pursues truth be different from someone who does not? Does a person filled with truth act different, achieve different results, have a greater impact, live a more fulfilling life? Without jumping straight to the idealistic answer, I must say, I don’t know. So few are the really interesting and unique people of the world. Everyone seems to be cut from the same cloth and to purse the same mundane existence. We all seem to pursue excellence in mediocrity. We want to be the very best “average man” than we can be. Being unique, different, and superior in any way is just too risky, to uncertain, to lonely, to quiet.

How sad that mediocrity is the pursuit of every man. Perhaps I need to find a new set of peers, friends, and companions. Even in a doctoral program, who is pursuing the degree for some superior purpose? It seems that everyone wants to be at the top of the mediocrity heap. No one wants to be average mediocre. We want to be the best mediocre that we can be.

Thinking

2005-08-30T13:33:00.000-04:00

I am thinking right now. What does that mean? My brain is doing something in its little chemical box. How did I make that happen? What do I do to make my mind think of apples? How do I even know that I want to think of apples? When I think of apples, do the exact same sequence of apple-like ideas come to mind? If not, then why not? If not, then to what degree do I really control what I think about.

If thinking is a shared activity, party controlled by my own thinking, partially controlled by the chemical mix in my head at a specific time, partially controlled by what I thought about last, and partially controlled by what ever else I am doing … then who is really thinking? Am I really part of a larger thinking universe? If seeing a red car influences what I think about when I think “apple”, then perhaps the red car is doing as much of the thinking as I am. Perhaps the whole universe is a big machine. It has chemical processes, electrical processes, physical processes … and thinking processes. When it rains on me and the water runs down my feet and into rivulets in the ground, I am part of the physical world, I change it. When a red car (Acura) triggers me to think about apples, I may just be a conduit for the giant thinking machine, I just contributed on wandering thought. Perhaps my thought about apples causes me to go get one out of the refrigerator. Since I ate the last apple, my daughter is triggered to terminate her thinking about apples and start thinking about oranges. Is that telepathy? Did I just change her thoughts by thinking about apples? Perhaps real telepathy is the transference of negative thoughts. Is it possible that only a finite number of people can think about apples at the same time? When I think apple, it might take away one unit of available apple-thoughts. If I take the last unit, then the next person cannot think apple. They have to think of cherries because all apple-thoughts are taken right now. That sounds like negative-telepathy.

I am really curious about how I control my own thinking. I perceive that thoughts are a spiritual experience – meaning something that is not material, something that is beyond flesh, unique and different from my eyebrows. But, the brain seems to be all flesh and electricity. When it thinks, the process is completely electrical/flesh. How does an image in my eye convert into a stimulus that thinks “apple”? Then when humans learned to write and read, how did we teach ourselves that “apple” meant a red thing to eat? Does “apple” and the red thing both cause the same triggers to fire in my brain? No certainly not. I can salivate when I see a good red thing, but I don’t remember ever salivating when I see “apple”.

Is thinking different from digesting? Put food in the stomach and the stomach begins to digest. It does something chemical that is unique based on the composition of the thing in stomach. Put visual or auditory stimuli into the brain and it begins to think. It thinks different and causes the body to do different things base don the content of the input. Perhaps thinking and digesting are exactly the same. Perhaps there is a reversed person co-residing with me that thinks with its stomach and eats with its brain. In that reverse person, when I eat, it thinks. When I think, it eats. It gets indigestion when I think about evil, but it goes “yum” when I think about trees and mountains. Maybe when I eat chocolate, it thinks sexy thoughts. When I eat vegetables, it thinks responsible thoughts. So the reason I like chocolate is because the reverse person sees bikini’s when I eat it. I hate beets. Those must cause reverse-person to think about child starvation in Africa.

Thinking and digesting are the same thing.

Why do we think? Perhaps for the same reason that we eat. It is a physical need. Perhaps we think because our bodies need that to survive. Some people are thinking gluttons. They think and think and think. Their brain is a big fat pig or a huge football player. Just like there are type A, B, and C food metabolisms, perhaps there are type A, B, and C thinking metabolisms. Some people are just predispositioned to think more. Their brains work better; they turn thoughts into mental muscle, while others turn thoughts into mental fat.

Thinking and digesting are the same thing.

Meditations

2005-08-29T10:04:00.000-04:00

Who has time to meditate? We have to spend all of our time thinking about things on purpose. There are so many problems that have to be solved very day that it takes all of our time thinking about those just to make the day work. Who has time to meditate? Professors, Ministers, Unemployed, Karate dudes, Monks, Hari Krishnas.

Free writing is meditation that is forces. It is forced like squeezing frosting out of a tube onto a cake. Those ideas have to choice but to come out. No wandering mists of thought stay on topic, push, push, push.

Meditation cannot be just free flow of thought. That leads to a meaningless sequence of barely connected ideas. It has to be more focused. Meditate on purpose. Focus mind, push thought, look for meaning. Is meditation a search for the meaning of something? We do not call it meditation when we are trying to solve a problem … that is thinking. We call it meditation when we are allowing our minds to search the cosmos of our brains for a solution that might be there is we just stay on topic for long enough. Medication should lead to broader solutions and ideas than just plain thinking. The image is that you open-up and search a topic across all references in your brain. You let the connections take you. But you still limit the flow to topics that are relevant.

I think sleeping is the next step down in uncontrolled thought. In sleep our minds follow paths of thoughts on their own. It is curious to what degree the conscious or controlling mind actually direct dreams. Is it really pure freewheeling thoughts? Or are dreams governed by our minds and morals as well?

Meditations … deep thought with XXX (Saturday Night Live). We perceive that meditation leads to deep understanding and wisdom. That is the right word … wisdom. Only by thinking beyond daily problem solving can we actually achieve wisdom about a subject. Daily problems get us to bathe, eat, sleep, and work. But, how wise is the average person who is dominated by this type of thought? Perhaps we must meditate so that we can move beyond the best way to clean the floor and understand why the floor should be clean at all. Or why my life has to be focused on clean floors. If I meditate will I understand what the important parts of life are? Will I be different from my floor-cleaning neighbors? How about my workaholic coworkers? If meditation leads to wisdom, what will you do with that wisdom? Is there a place in the world for wisdom? I think wisdom is not a very marketable commodity. Wisdom will lead someone to realize that the market is stupid; it is created and directed for the floor-cleaning people. Wisdom should allow you to escape the tyranny of the pursuit of money and pursue what is more important. Graduate students are supposed to be most interested in knowledge. But what if meditation tells me that gardening is #1, or raising chickens? From the outside the wisdom produced by meditating may appear worse than the cleaning of floors. If more people spent time in meditation seeking deeper understanding, then there should be more people that are unique and pursuing what they have learned themselves, rather than what the Gatorade of Mr. Clean commercials told them to do.

Observation

2005-08-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

I open my eyes and I observe. I tune my ears and I observe. I inhale deeply and I observe.

Observation is the collection of information about the outside world. For a human it involved the senses. Five senses bring information into the human mind – sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. These senses determine how we perceive the world and what we can know about it. We are limited to what our senses tell us about the world. To a blind man there is no such thing as color. To the deaf there is no pitch or tone. Our five senses may tell us only a fraction of the characteristics of the world around us. When I look at a flower, I see color, I feel softness, I smell fragrance, and I taste plantiness. But, there may be much more to the flower than I can collect with these senses. The flow may contain chemicals that heal sickness, or cause sickness. They may have some relationship with the soil that I cannot determine through my senses. This means that we may be able to expand our knowledge of the flow by creating additional senses.

Research is the creation of new tools for observation. Research may add a sense that can look at a flower and see its chemical properties. They may be able to sense the collection and relationship with the soil. Research senses may understand how the flower works with the sun. Observation need not be only 5 senses. It can include hundreds (even thousands) of other sense tools. We devise each of these to collect data that our bodies cannot and to translate that information into a form that we can see, touch, smell, taste, or hear.

How do we determine which senses should be created for the flow? How do we guess that it might contain poison or medicine? I think there must be two ways. One is to deduce from observational clues. Observation hints that there are properties in the flower that we cannot see. So we contrive methods to extract those properties os that we can see them. This would be deduction … I think. Second, we may have conducted an experiment on a rock because the properties of the rock hinted at other properties in it. We may apply our rock experiments or senses to the flower just to see what happens. We have no hint that the rock experiment will be meaningful to flowers, but we do it anyway just to find out.

If there are properties of the flower that are hinted at, the first method will pursue them. If there are properties of the flower that are completely hidden from ours senses or observations, then the second method may lead us to stumble on them.

Of course the second method is very shot-in-the-dark. If we are lucky we may hit something. If we are not then we may miss a property and never know how close we were to something valuable, but completely hidden.

Observation must be linked with thinking. Experience is a fleeting experience. Without memory and thought, it is gone as soon as it happens. Memory captures the observation for later and repeated replay. Memory also gives us the ability to think about what we sensed. Notice that without memory, observation is sensing. What we call observation often includes understanding and recordkeeping. Memory makes that possible. Observation = sensing + memory + thought + curiosity. Or perhaps curiosity takes this to the step of thought and experiment.

What would we know about flowers without memory behind sensing? Nothing. What would be discover or pursue without memory? Nothing. Observation is more than sensing, it is remembering what was sensed and thinking about it. Observation is very active, not just passive.