Observe data collection at the moment of measurement See, observe, learn how data are collected at moment and place of measurement. "You never learn more about a process than when you directly observe how data are actually measured," said Cuthbert Daniel, a superb applied statistician. See with fresh eyes. Walk around what you want to learn about. Talk to those who do measurements. See how numbers came to be. Do those measuring know the desired answer? Are those measuring skilled, alert, honest, biased, incompetent, sloppy, tired and emotional?...Artifacts and errors in measurements measured? How are outliers adjudicated? Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes uxmeasurement
A Reflection of the Truth An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Roger Kitching The need to recordMental infrastructureScientific writingA three-layered process of documentationIncidental details+1 More
The need to record With collecting comes the need to record. A specimen without a label is simply a (sometimes) pretty object. Without its associated data it is scientifically worthless. informationorganization
Mental infrastructure The diary provides the mental infrastructure that stimulates the mind to remember. To serve as a reminder memory
Scientific writing What Mick Southern taught me was both the imperative to and the means of writing scientific prose—“if it’s not published it’s not done,” as a later adviser put it. Mock showed me that the rather dry technical requirements of scientific writing did not necessarily mean that elegance, humor, and even wit need be excluded from the scientists’ products. Selling new ideasYou cannot consume what is not produced sciencewriting
A three-layered process of documentation A three-layered process of documentation: (1) First, there is the field notebook. This is where the actual numbers are recorded, together with passing observations relevant to the interpretation of these numbers. Paper is still proving more durable than electronic data. (2) The journal is a parallel record to that of the notebook—a daily account of events, thoughts, and observations. (3) Last of the three strata, then, are the publications. Traditionally, in science, these are articles in academic journals leavened with chapters in books. To be successful, a young scientist need aspire to no more than these two forms of output together with their oral versions at interminable conferences and meetings of learned societies. There came a time in my scientific development, however, when other forms of publication became important: magazines articles, and writing books. notetakingrecords
Incidental details In these journals lay the incidental details by which a book can be differentiated from a set of scientific articles. Such incidental details can become ends in themselves. details
Memory prompts Journals are memory prompts and perhaps capture exquisite (and not so exquisite) moments of experience. notetakingmemoryexperience