debates vs. conversations

I used to be a member of the debate club in university. The biggest event in my first semester was a debating contest. I do not remember the topics now, but I still remember some details in preparations.

We usually had four or five players in a team, including one or two substitutes. Half of players prepared the arguments. The others prepared the counterarguments. Before the formal contest, we had two or three warm-ups. At the beginning, I didn't understand why I had to rack my brain for the negative side if I belonged to the affirmative side. However, the counterarguments we prepared turned out very useful, even much useful the our arguments in the real debating. Sometimes what the other side said was exactly what I had imaged. So my responses seemed prompt and easily hit the point.

The book The Craft of Research tells us that academic writings are conversations with readers. Well,the word "conversation" is elegant.In my opinion,it is more of a debate than a concersation. Readers are not merely your friends but also your friendenemies(friend+enemy).

Reading Report: The Craft of Research, Part 3, Making a Claim and Supporting It

The word “craft” in the title reminds me of the distinction between scholars and craftsmen. Before the Renaissance, scholars and philosophers were supposed to master the arts other than the crafts. I remember Stephen Mason claimed in his work A History of the Sciences that the uniting of scholars and craftsmen gave birth to the modern science. So, learning arts as well as crafts has become scholars’ own business since then.

It is clear that the focus of the book The Craft of Research is some essentials in practicing scientific researches as techniques. The third part of the book deals with the most important part in scientific researches, making arguments. According to the authors, arguments are composed of claims, reasons, and evidence, and reinforced by acknowledgements and responses. Besides, the warrants linking claims and reasons are also discussed in this part.

Assume that there is an argument:

I claim that the communication technologies make the world a better place, because they make me happy, based on the example that I can call my parents at low cost.

The argument fits the basic formula; there is a claim, a reason, and evidence. However, it is not a good argument. If I was a skeptical reader, I would ask what are the definitions of “communication technologies” and “a better place” in the claim, because they are not clear; or being tougher, say that I don’t think this is an important issue worthy of study. Because the criteria for good claims are clarity and significance, but this claim fails to do so.

Moreover, the reason and the evidence seem weak. To support the claim, more than one reason will be needed. Skeptical readers would say there are plenty of better explanations than this one, or they do not think the reason and the claim are necessarily cause and effect. This is where the warrant lies. But in this argument, the warrant between the claim and reason is not so obvious. A more general circumstances and consequence should be stated in further explanation.

Last but not the least, the example in the argument may be the most apparent targets for critics. Readers would doubt that whether the example is representative enough or not? Further more, what if the evidence in the argument is some findings from a survey or an experiment, or some logical inferences drawn from theories? Are they accurate and precise enough?

As a conclusion, what impressed me most in this part is always keeping readers in mind and keeping questioning myself. The lists of questions that might arise from readers in the book are extremely valuable to young scholars who do not have so many readers yet.

the Voice from My Heart

When he told me that I was not allowed to mingle with male scholars in the same conference hall and he would drive me to the female campus of King Saud University in Riyadh, Mohammed was too shy to look into my eyes. He was a junior student of this university who served for the Conference. Honestly, I felt OK about this. Since, on one hand, my optimism always led me to the brighter side even when things were at their worst; on the other hand, it was not the first time I came across gender inconvenience. I was the only child of my parents who ran a small pharmacy in a middle province of China. Unfortunately, I was not a son as my grandparents hoped. Although I may not share the same amount of love from them like my cousins did, a loss may turn out to be a gain. I grew up without so much pressure from expectations and developed an optimistic character and self-confidence.

I kept being a top student since primary school because I enjoyed studying rather than to full fill parents’ vanity. I won the national competition on writing and mathematics because I felt interesting in playing with sentences and numbers. I chose the School of Liberal Arts when I enrolled at the Renmin University of China with the confidence that multiple knowledge in humanities and social science would well prepare me for the future.

On the way to female campus, my only concern was how to make my presentation without being present at the same conference room. Mohammed told me they used videoconferencing system to solve this problem, which virtually shocked me when I saw the male scholars on the screen while they can only hear my voice. I had to wear the electronic veil to begin my presentation. Gradually, a strong voice from heart became louder and louder. I can do something no matter how tiny it was. It was the same voice when I quitted the well-paid internship in Microsoft and began work voluntarily for NGOs. Suddenly, I stopped presentation. “I give up the last two minutes of my presentation.” I said, slowly and firmly, through the videoconferencing, “I really appreciate the opportunity offered by King Saud University. But I hope next time when I come to Riyadh, I myself can virtually present the conference, not my voice.” When I met Mohammed at the front door of female campus, he told me that my absent presentation won the loud applause of scholars from all over the world.

This experience is significant in my academic career. It is a vivid demonstration of new media technologies and their influence – both in the sense of technological features that bring in transformations in production and distribution, as well as in the sense of users who are embedded in certain political, economic and cultural structures. What is more important, it makes me feel responsible to give help to the helpless and give voice to the voiceless through new media, especially when I am fully aware of the powers embedded in media as a communication major student.

The Tao of Statistics

End of analysis,
Start of results,
Thin ice.

This is a poem for p values, a term in statistics. It is written by Dana Keller, the writer of the book The tao of statistics: a path to understanding (with no math). It was the first time for me to finish reading a statictics book at one sitting. It is like Laozi's Dao De Jing, which is concise and comprehensive.

I have never expected that there will be a statistics book like a novel or a comic book. Although I have taken at least two courses on it, statistics is supposed to be extremely tough and the learning process is really suffering. Every time I tried my best to remember a concept or an equation, but still did not know how to use it in analysis. Worse yet, I promptly forgot all about them after the course examinations. So, next time when I have to use statistics, it would be a new round of learning and suffering.

I used to lose all my confidence in statistics. I even doubted my own IQ or whether I did not work hard enough. Gradually, I found that it was not the problem of intelligence or diligence, but the problem of Tao, the ways. Maybe it is a suitable way for others, but it is not my way. Why I have to cut my feet to fit the others’ shoes. Why not to find my own shoes? There must be my ways somewhere. All I need is the confidence and searching. The tao of statistics: a path to understanding (with no math) gives me the confidence to going on.

Reviews of EE6605 Lesson 2

Last week, Professor Chen briefly introduced graph theories, three types of networks, and some fundamental concepts of the complex studies. This week, he focused on Paul Erdős and Alfréd Rényi's random graph theory.

Assume that there are N isolated nodes. Let's randomly link two of them to generate a random graph network. We use p to represent the probability of randomly linking two nodes. Here, the number of all links can be easily calculated, which is K (number of links) = p*N (N-1)/2. Professor Chen also demonstrated how to calculate L(the average path length) and C(the cluster coefficient) step by step.

http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v6/n7/full/nphys1665.html

What impressed me most was the comparison between various real networks, such as social networks, information networks, protein networks, and so on. Networks which have relatively small L and small C are more likely the random graph networks. Meanwhile, small L and large C are features of small world networks. Those that follow the power-law distribution are scale-free networks.

However, in our daily life, networks composed of isolated nodes are rare. What if the nodes are not isolated and the edges are not randomly linked?