Re: Re: Re: Not Using a Text Editor Interface for Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg64530] Re: [mg64513] Re: Re: Not Using a Text Editor Interface for Mathematica
- From: "David Park" <djmp at earthlink.net>
- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:31:04 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
For some interesting reading take a look at Chapter 2 in Edward R. Tufte's 'Visual Explanations'. Dr. John Snow found the cause of the 1854 Cholera Epidemic in London by FIRST plotting the case data on a map of London, and THEN doing the analysis. In the case of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, although they were aware of the potential problem, the technicians never made the proper graphic that related risk to temperature in past launches and thus failed to present a convincing case for not launching. Maybe graphics doesn't always come before analysis, but it often does. One advantage of the standard notebook interface and the Text-Equation-Diagram style of presentation is that it does not bias you one way or another as to the method of attacking a problem. David Park djmp at earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/ From: Renan [mailto:renan.birck at gmail.com] To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net Murray Eisenberg wrote in comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica: > Then perhaps you SHOULD be doing more drawing of diagrams (i.e., plots > and graphs). As Hamming once wrote, "The purpose of computing is > insight, not numbers" (or something like that). I draw diagrams when I'm done with the number crunching.