27 research outputs found
Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization
While we typically focus on data visualization as a tool for facilitating
cognitive tasks (e.g., learning facts, making decisions), we know relatively
little about their second-order impacts on our opinions, attitudes, and values.
For example, could design or framing choices interact with viewers' social
cognitive biases in ways that promote political polarization? When reporting on
U.S. attitudes toward public policies, it is popular to highlight the gap
between Democrats and Republicans (e.g., with blue vs red connected dot plots).
But these charts may encourage social-normative conformity, influencing
viewers' attitudes to match the divided opinions shown in the visualization. We
conducted three experiments examining visualization framing in the context of
social conformity and polarization. Crowdworkers viewed charts showing
simulated polling results for public policy proposals. We varied framing
(aggregating data as non-partisan "All US Adults," or partisan "Democrat" and
"Republican") and the visualized groups' support levels. Participants then
reported their own support for each policy. We found that participants'
attitudes biased significantly toward the group attitudes shown in the stimuli
and this can increase inter-party attitude divergence. These results
demonstrate that data visualizations can induce social conformity and
accelerate political polarization. Choosing to visualize partisan divisions can
divide us further
Talking architecture: exploring knowledge production through conversation in architectural creative practice research
This paper will discuss the field of Architectural Creative Practice Research (ACPR) with a view to understanding what architects actually do in practice and how what they do may be translated into creative practice research. It argues that, since it is an entrepreneurial profession, a lot of what architects do is talk, but that we do not usually think of talking as a design skill or research method.
However, talking about architecture is not just words. Not only can it can inform the production of built form, it can allow for nuanced and diverse views of practice to be shared and developed.
This paper will argue that talking about architecture (and not simply drawing it or writing about it) can help us to develop greater understandings of both the role of the architect in practice and the diverse opportunities that an architectural response to creative practice research may provide
Constraining the Scatter in the Mass-Richness Relation of maxBCG Clusters With Weak Lensing and X-ray Data
We measure the logarithmic scatter in mass at fixed richness for clusters in
the maxBCG cluster catalog, an optically selected cluster sample drawn from
SDSS imaging data. Our measurement is achieved by demanding consistency between
available weak lensing and X-ray measurements of the maxBCG clusters, and the
X-ray luminosity--mass relation inferred from the 400d X-ray cluster survey, a
flux limited X-ray cluster survey. We find \sigma_{\ln
M|N_{200}}=0.45^{+0.20}_{-0.18} (95% CL) at N_{200} ~ 40, where N_{200} is the
number of red sequence galaxies in a cluster. As a byproduct of our analysis,
we also obtain a constraint on the correlation coefficient between \ln Lx and
\ln M at fixed richness, which is best expressed as a lower limit, r_{L,M|N} >=
0.85 (95% CL). This is the first observational constraint placed on a
correlation coefficient involving two different cluster mass tracers. We use
our results to produce a state of the art estimate of the halo mass function at
z=0.23 -- the median redshift of the maxBCG cluster sample -- and find that it
is consistent with the WMAP5 cosmology. Both the mass function data and its
covariance matrix are presented.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Ap
Core or Cusps: The Central Dark Matter Profile of a Strong Lensing Cluster with a Bright Central Image at Redshift 1
Pol3: Polarizing Political Polls
Project materials for "Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization
Dispersion vs Disparity
Hiding Uncertainty Can Encourage Stereotyping When Visualizing Social Outcome
Ways of knowing, ways of telling: recognition and explication of knowledge in creative practice research
Presentation of co-authored paper, with Eli Hatleskog, University of Ljubjana. An output from my involvement as a postdoctorate researcher on the ADAPT-r ITN, funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013
Recommended from our members
Basic Energy Sciences Network Requirements Review (Final Report)
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is the high-performance network user facility for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) and delivers highly reliable data transport capabilities optimized for the requirements of data-intensive science. In essence, ESnet is the circulatory system that enables the DOE science mission by connecting all of its laboratories and facilities in the US and abroad. ESnet is funded and stewarded by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program and managed and operated by the Scientific Networking Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). ESnet is widely regarded as a global leader in the research and education networking community.
Between March and September 2022, ESnet and the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) of the DOE SC organized an ESnet requirements review of BES-supported activities. Preparation for these events included identification of key stakeholders: program and facility management, research groups, and technology providers. Each stakeholder group was asked to prepare formal case study documents about its relationship to the BES program to build a complete understanding of the current, near-term, and long-term status, expectations, and processes that will support the science going forward. A series of pre-planning meetings better prepared case study authors for this task, along with guidance on how the review would proceed in a virtual fashion
Direct observation of vortices in an electron fluid
Vortices are the hallmarks of hydrodynamic flow. Recent studies indicate that
strongly-interacting electrons in ultrapure conductors can display signatures
of hydrodynamic behavior including negative nonlocal resistance, Poiseuille
flow in narrow channels, and a violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law. Here we
provide the first visualization of whirlpools in an electron fluid. By
utilizing a nanoscale scanning superconducting quantum interference device on a
tip (SQUID-on-tip) we image the current distribution in a circular chamber
connected through a small aperture to an adjacent narrow current carrying strip
in high-purity type-II Weyl semimetal WTe2. In this geometry, the Gurzhi
momentum diffusion length and the size of the aperture determine the vortex
stability phase diagram. We find that the vortices are present only for small
apertures, whereas the flow is laminar (non-vortical) for larger apertures,
consistent with the theoretical analysis of the hydrodynamic regime and in
contrast to the expectations of ballistic transport in WTe2 at low
temperatures. Moreover, near the vortical-to-laminar transition, we observe a
single vortex in the chamber splitting into two vortices, a behavior that can
occur only in the hydrodynamic regime and cannot be sustained by ballistic
transport. These findings suggest a novel mechanism of hydrodynamic flow:
instead of the commonly considered electron-electron scattering at the bulk,
which becomes extremely weak at low temperatures, the spatial diffusion of
charge carriers' momenta is enabled by small-angle scattering at the planar
surfaces of thin pure crystals. This surface-induced para-hydrodynamics opens
new avenues for exploring and utilizing electron fluidics in high-mobility
electron systems.Comment: Main text: 15 pages, 5 figures. Method: 18 pages, 9 Extended Data
figures. Supplementary videos: