Macroscopes: models for collective decision making

We introduce a new model of collective decision making, when a global decision needs to be made but the parties only possess partial information, and are unwilling (or unable) to first create a globalcomposite of their local views. Our macroscope model captures two key features of many real-world problems: allotment structure (how access to local information is apportioned between parties, including overlaps between the parties) and the possible presence of meta-information (what each party knows about the allotment structure of the overall problem). Using the framework of communication complexity, we formalize the efficient solution of a macroscope. We present general results about the macroscope model, and also results that abstract the essential computational operations underpinning practical applications, including in financial markets and decentralized sensor networks. We illustrate the computational problem inherent in real-world collective decision making processes using results for specific functions, involving detecting a change in state (constant and step functions), and computing statistical properties (the mean).Comment: Presented at Collective Intelligence conference, 2012 (arXiv:1204.2991), 8 page

Creating Macroscopes with Technology and Analytics: New Possibilities in Our Lives – The Important Role of Tomorrow’s Mathematics Professionals (Abstract)

Our world is increasingly computerized, interconnected, and instrumented with sensors. Massive amounts of data are being captured in computer systems about our natural environment and man-made engineered structures, processes, and systems. But it is necessary to make sense out of all this data. With new computer methods computers can in effect become macroscopes, enabling us to see the world portrayed by our data

Discovering Argumentative Patterns in Energy Polylogues: A Macroscope for Argument Mining

A macroscope is proposed and tested here for the discovery of the unique argumentative footprint that characterizes how a collective (e.g., group, online community) manages differences and pursues disagreement through argument in a polylogue. The macroscope addresses broader analytic problems posed by various conceptualizations of large-scale argument, such as fields, spheres, communities, and institutions. The design incorporates a two-tier methodology for detecting argument patterns of the arguments performed in arguing by an interactive collective that produces views, or topographies, of the ways that issues are generated in the making and defending of standpoints. The design premises for the macroscope build on insights about argument patterns from pragma-dialectical theory by incorporating research and theory on disagreement management and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The design reconceptualizes prototypical and stereotypical argument patterns for characterizing large-scale argumentation. A prototype of the macroscope is tested on data drawn from six threads about oil-drilling and fracking from the subreddit Changemyview. The implementation suggests the efficacy of the macroscope’s design and potential for identifying what communities make controversial and how the disagreement space in a polylogue is managed through stereotypical argument patterns in terms of claims/premises, inferential relations, and presentational devices

A Cognitive, Socio-semiotic, Linguistic, and Discursive Approach to Popularisation Strategies in Infographics

Information graphics or infographics are multimodal discursive spaces created by the combination of data and information visualisation, typography and colour. As effective forms of information communication and popularisation, infographics are frequently used by international organisations and government bodies as a means of popularising complex topics linked to health, food safety, politics, business and the environment. In this paper, Ciuccarelli\u2019s 2012 concept of the visual macroscope is adopted as an interpretative lens on a small corpus of infographics from the World Health Organisation, together with the tools of socio-semiotic, linguistic and discursive analysis, applied in a bottom-up approach. From a socio-semiotic perspective, it is seen that layout, pictorials, colour, typography and the order of information combine to make the Ideal and the Real (Kress, van Leeuwen 1996) stand out; from a linguistic and discursive point of view, thematic organisation interacts with pictorial organisation to make salient information emerge; lexical repetition, unmarked declaratives, and constant theme enact the strategy of explanation, frequently used in popularisation discourse

A Macroscope for Global History. Seshat Global History Databank: a methodological overview

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Digital Humanities Quarterly following peer review. The final published version is available online at: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/10/4/000272/000272.html This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 LicenseThis article introduces the ‘Seshat: Global History’ project, the methodology it is based upon and its potential as a tool for historians and other humanists. The article describes in detail how the Seshat methodology and platform can be used to tackle big questions that play out over long time scales whilst allowing users to drill down to the detail and place every single data point both in its historic and historiographical context. Seshat thus offers a platform underpinned by a rigorous methodology to actually do 'longue durée' history and the article argues for the need for humanists and social scientists to engage with data driven ‘longue durée' history. The article argues that Seshat offers a much needed infrastructure in which different skills sets and disciplines can come together to analyze the past using long timescales. In addition to highlighting the theoretical and methodological underpinnings, the potential of Seshat is demonstrated by showcasing three case studies. Each of these case studies is centred around a set of long standing questions and historiographical debates and it is argued that the introduction of a Seshat approach has the potential to radically alter our understanding of these questions.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Understanding Data Search as a Socio-technical Practice

Open research data are heralded as having the potential to increase effectiveness, productivity, and reproducibility in science, but little is known about the actual practices involved in data search. The socio-technical problem of locating data for reuse is often reduced to the technological dimension of designing data search systems. We combine a bibliometric study of the current academic discourse around data search with interviews with data seekers. In this article, we explore how adopting a contextual, socio-technical perspective can help to understand user practices and behavior and ultimately help to improve the design of data discovery systems.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, 7 table

Program: 2019 Undergraduate Mathematics Day

Conference progra

Program: 2019 Undergraduate Mathematics Day

Conference progra

Naturally occurring argument

A methodological commitment to studying argumentation as it occurs naturally is important because it can challenge what we imagine argument to be. Whether studying the role of argument in ordinary conversational interaction or in large-scale public controversies, close attention to what people actually do when arguing leads in directions different from those based on idealized views of argument. As the practice of argument changes in response to new communication technologies, the importance of studying argument as it actually occurs is becoming even more important.Ope

Argumentation in large, complex practices

Differences arise in macro-activities, such as the production of energy, food, and healthcare, where the management of these differences happens in polylogues as many actors pursue scores of positions on a variety of issues in numerous venues. Polylogues are essential to the large-scale practices that organize macro-activities but present significant challenges for argumentation theory and research. Key to the challenge is conceptualizing the variety of argumentative roles that go beyond the classic normative definition of protagonist and antagonist. A macroscope is devised for identifying argumentative roles in the communicative work of organizations, and the communicative work of the network of organizations, related to the production of gas from shale in the Marcellus region of the Northeastern United States. The macroscope scaffolds a design thinking inquiry into the variety of argumentative roles in the communicative work of organizations in a polylogue and finds: (1) innovation and entrepreneurialism in the design of organizations as devices for managing disagreement; (2) argumentative roles as services specializing in particular aspects of argument; and (3) networks of organizations with prominent types of specialized roles that give shape to the disagreement space around a large, complex practice. It is proposed that the varieties of argumentative roles in polylogue are not random or arbitrary but derive from more general pragmatic principles about how disagreement is organized and how methods of disagreement management emerge within communication relative to a macro-activity