7,760 research outputs found
History and scientific practice in the construction of an adequate philosophy of science: revisiting a Whewell/Mill debate
William Whewell raised a series of objections concerning John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science which suggested that Mill’s views were not properly informed by the history of science or by adequate reflection on scientific practices. The aim of this paper is to revisit and evaluate this incisive Whewellian criticism of Mill’s views by assessing Mill’s account of Michael Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction. The historical evidence demonstrates that Mill’s reconstruction is an inadequate reconstruction of this historical episode and the scientific practices Faraday employed. But a study of Faraday’s research also raises some questions about Whewell’s characterization of this discovery. Thus, this example provides an opportunity to reconsider the debate between Whewell and Mill concerning the role of the sciences in the development of an adequate philosophy of scientific methodology.Keywords: Inductivism; Experiment; Theory; Methodology; Electromagnetism
Connecting GRBs and galaxies: the probability of chance coincidence
Studies of GRB host galaxies are crucial to understanding GRBs. However,
since they are identified by the superposition in the plane of the sky of a GRB
afterglow and a galaxy there is always a possibility that an association
represents a chance alignment, rather than a physical connection. We examine a
uniform sample of 72 GRB fields to explore the probability of chance
superpositions. There is typically a ~1% chance that an optical afterglow will
coincide with a galaxy by chance. While spurious host galaxy detections will,
therefore, be rare, the possibility must be considered when examining
individual GRB/host galaxy examples. It is also tempting to use the large and
uniform collection of X-ray afterglow positions to search for GRB-associated
galaxies. However, we find that approximately half of the 14 superpositions in
our sample are likely to occur by chance, so in the case of GRBs localized only
by an X-ray afterglow, even statistical studies are suspect.Comment: edited, accepted by Ap
A Project Based Approach to Statistics and Data Science
In an increasingly data-driven world, facility with statistics is more
important than ever for our students. At institutions without a statistician,
it often falls to the mathematics faculty to teach statistics courses. This
paper presents a model that a mathematician asked to teach statistics can
follow. This model entails connecting with faculty from numerous departments on
campus to develop a list of topics, building a repository of real-world
datasets from these faculty, and creating projects where students interface
with these datasets to write lab reports aimed at consumers of statistics in
other disciplines. The end result is students who are well prepared for
interdisciplinary research, who are accustomed to coping with the
idiosyncrasies of real data, and who have sharpened their technical writing and
speaking skills
Are Young People's Educational Outcomes Linked to their Sense of Control?
This paper analyzes the link between young people's sense (locus) of control over their lives and their investments in education. We find that young people with a more internal locus of control have a higher probability of finishing secondary school and, conditional on completion, meeting the requirements to obtain a university entrance rank. Moreover, those with an internal locus of control who obtain a university entrance rank achieve somewhat higher rankings than do their peers who have a more external locus of control. Not surprisingly, there is a negative relationship between growing up in disadvantage and educational outcomes. However, this effect does not appear to operate indirectly by increasing the likelihood of having a more external locus of control. In particular, we find no significant relationship between family welfare history and young people's locus of control.locus of control, parental socio-economic background, education
Data Driven Computing by the Morphing Fast Fourier Transform Ensemble Kalman Filter in Epidemic Spread Simulations
The FFT EnKF data assimilation method is proposed and applied to a stochastic
cell simulation of an epidemic, based on the S-I-R spread model. The FFT EnKF
combines spatial statistics and ensemble filtering methodologies into a
localized and computationally inexpensive version of EnKF with a very small
ensemble, and it is further combined with the morphing EnKF to assimilate
changes in the position of the epidemic.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to ICCS 201
The interminable issue of effectiveness: substantive purposes, outcomes and research challenges in the advancement of environmental impact assessment theory
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