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P.B. Medawar. Advice to a young scientist. Basic Books. 1979.

Medawar’s Experimentation Models & Computer Science. P.B. Medawar. Advice to a young scientist. Basic Books. 1979. Peter Medawar. Nobel Prize for Medicine 1960 1915- 1987, born in Rio de Janeiro, son of a Lebanese business man who was a naturalized British subject.

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P.B. Medawar. Advice to a young scientist. Basic Books. 1979.

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  1. Medawar’s Experimentation Models & Computer Science P.B. Medawar. Advice to a young scientist. Basic Books. 1979.

  2. Peter Medawar • Nobel Prize for Medicine 1960 • 1915- 1987, born in Rio de Janeiro, son of a Lebanese business man who was a naturalized British subject. • Bachelor’s degree from Oxford in 1932. • Worked on tissue grafts and transplants

  3. Solutions Solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent. Herbert Simon Research is the art of the soluble. Peter Medawar

  4. How Do we look at things? • El Greco test

  5. Medawar’s Experiments and Discovery • Four kinds • Baconian (observe) • Aristotelian (effect) • Galilean (hypothesis) • Kantian (thought) • What does it mean to do experiments in CS?

  6. 1. Baconian Experimentation • Find truths by careful examination of things as they are • Compilation of facts • Contrived performance rather than natural occurrance • No control group, no theory • Examples • Magnetising nails • Static electricity in silk • Trying things out or mucking about

  7. Baconian experimentation in CS • Early IR • KWIC/ KWOC indices • Zipf distribution • Counting word occurrences and distributions

  8. 2. Aristotelian Experimentation(John Glanville, Royal Soc. 1636-84) • Demonstrate some preconceived idea • Ring a bell before giving the dog his dinner • Effect without theory • Examples of X • CS??

  9. Aristolelian Experiments in CS • Eliza • Bob • Pop up ads • IR data visualizations

  10. Post hoc, ergo prompter hoc Psych: Why do you flail your arms around like that? Patient: Keeps the wild elephants at bay. Psych: But there aren’t any wild elephants here. Patient: That’s right. Effective, isn’t it!

  11. 4. Kantian Experiment • Thought experiments • Examples • non-Euclidian spaces • Parallel lines that meet • Let’s look at that differently

  12. Kant meets CS • N-dimensional vector spaces • Shneiderman data walls • Hypercube • Web graph • Data visualization

  13. 3. Galilean Experimentation • Expose hypothesis to a test • Dropping of canon balls off Pisa tower to test his hypothesis of gravitational acceleration • Leads to the null hypothesis • Experiments can not really prove anything! • Best you can do is refute the null hypothesis • I.e., that you have done better than wild good luck • Looking at results of differences of observations • Be prepared to take “no difference” as an answer

  14. Hypotheses I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not. Medawar

  15. Galilean Experimentation in CS • Algorithm efficiency • Algorithm effectiveness • User preference • Etc

  16. Not withstanding • Simpson’s Paradox • 2 data sets -> separately support a conclusion • BUT the union supports the opposite conclusion • Will Roger’s Phenomena • In a patient study, it is possible to transfer a patient from one group to another and improve the statistics of both groups • Mark Twain’s Observation • Lies, damned lies and statistics!

  17. How to be prepared to do research I • Mastering the literature • Too much • Confine the imagination • Psychological substitute for research • Too little • Make an idiot of yourself • Mix some eclectic breadth with selected depth • Eg. ACM Communications and IJHCI

  18. How to prepare II • Get on with it • Get results • Repeat others work • Try variations • Try other data • Join the discussion • When I tried that … • I got exactly the same results when I… • I agree, for this purpose x is better then y

  19. How to prepare III • Follow the art of the soluble • Start with a “soft underbelly problem” • Quantification of vague phenomenon • Isolating factors • Selecting feature sets To quantify is not to be a scientist, but it does help. (Medawar)

  20. Also part of the Scientific Process • Devising hypotheses that can be tested in a practical manner • Imaginative guesswork • Exercise of common sense • All experimentation is a form of criticism • Having the right slot in your mind to put a new observation or idea • Good luck counts • Accept flux. Science as a Maoist microcosm of continuing revolution.

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