From the Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek :
Rather than recognizing the beauty of laws otherwise discovered, we use principles of beauty – vast symmetry and a high ratio of output to input – to enable discovery. When this works, we have an “anthropic” explanation of the laws’ beauty: If they were not beautiful, we would not have found them.
Many different themes run through Deaton’s work – one of which is an emphasis on the importance of measurement. In his view, data collection and economic theory have become too separated, to the advantage of neither the data collector nor the economic theorist. Collectors need the guidance of theory and analysts need to understand the data they work with. Too often, Deaton says, “what we think we know about the world is dependent on data that may not mean what we think they mean”.
The genesis of the Pie Chart :
Some scholars believe the pie chart may have been inspired by the use of circles in representing concepts in philosophy and mathematics. Playfair’s brother John was a highly regarded Enlightenment mathematician and scientist. It is likely that through John, William saw a divided circle used to display the component parts of a category. Mathematicians and philosophers used this type of illustration as far back as the 14th Century.
***
Today’s leading data visualization experts like Edward Tufte and Stephen Few dislike pie chart. Tufte writes that “A table is nearly always better than a dumb pie chart”, and in a long screed against the pie, Few admonishes data visualizers to “save the pies for dessert.”
They look so frail and adorable. Long life to Lykoi kitten :
Humans have been manipulating animal mating for eons, but it’s by no means a primitive task. Breeding is, in one view, a years-long assembly line for turning out increasingly finely tuned products. As in any complex production process, care and attention are required to prevent defects. In breeding animals to be larger or smaller, faster or stronger, hairier or balder, humans manipulate the stuff of life itself, but we are never able to fully control the devilishly complex processes that have evolved over billions of years.
Those who say that science can answer all questions are themselves standing outside science to make that claim. That is why naturalism—the modern version of materialism, seeing reality as defined by what is within reach of the sciences—becomes a metaphysical theory when it strays beyond methodology to talk of what can exist. Denying metaphysics and upholding materialism must itself be a move within metaphysics. It involves standing outside the practice of science and talking of its scope. The assertion that science can explain everything can never come from within science. It is always a statement about science.
Abnormal Capitalist 