söndag 28 oktober 2012

Theme 1



The IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics is a journal that present important research results and state-of-the-art seminal papers within subjects related to computer graphics and visualization techniques, systems, software, hardware, and user interface issues. (Impact factor 2.215)

Visualization Rhetoric: Framing Effects in Narrative Visualization
The article discusses the complexity of visualizing data. How social and cultural norms affect the end-users understanding and interpretation of the visualization, and also how important the creators task is to design an objective visualization without ambiguity issues. The important task of deciding what to include and what to leave out creates a lot of questions regarding the creators objectivity. To deal with all these influences there has to be strategies, which are discussed as rhetoric techniques, objective ways of dealing and handling with visualized data. The contribution of this article is to present these techniques and categorize them so that it makes it easier for the end-user to, in a critical way, look at narrative visualizations. It also explains that it's not only the visualization itself that has to be reviewed but in what context the visualization is meant to be used. Questions like who is the audience and what is the purpose of the visualization were explained and discussed. In the beginning of the article there are a lot of references to "InfoVis" but no real explanation of what it is. It kind of just assumes that the reader knows. They could have explained that it is a toolkit to create interactive data visualizations.

  1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Russell defines “sense-data” as things that are immediately known to us, such as colors, sounds, smells, and so on. This data gives us a sort of immediate sensation of how things are and appear to us; however, having a sensation of a color is not the same as the color itself. The color itself, together with things such as tables and other surroundings that we get a sensation of, is in Russell’s book referred to as a “sense-datum”, not to be mistaken with his definition of “sense-data”. 

Russell introduces these different notations to help in answering two questions related to sense-data and sense-datum. In his questions he is asking whether tables exist or not and what the sense-data is and is not telling us. He then also discusses what consequences this brings to the answers.
(1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?

  1. What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

A proposition assigns curtain properties to a specific object. Russell also says that we can’t understand a proposition if we are not fully acquainted of all the constituents of the proposition. One example of a proposition could be “Bertrand Russell was a philosopher”.
A statement means something involving a description, which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.

  1. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

A definite description is a description that denotes only one singular object. This object is the nature of our knowledge however, we are not acquainted with the object. Phrases of the form “the so-and-so” is what Russell defines an object with a “definite description” unlike an “ambiguous description” of an object which is on the form “a so-and-so”.

  1. In chapter 8 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 9 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

One problem that Russell’s addressing is that a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premisses from which it is deduced are true.

Another point that Russell addresses is that we by no means easily can discover criterions for intuitive beliefs, which leads Russell to a conclution that all our knowledge of truths is infected with some degree of doubt, and a theory which ignores this fact would be plainly wrong.

3 kommentarer:

  1. IEEE publishes many journals, and also conference proceedings, of high quality, especially in more technical areas. The impact factor is quite high, at least for being a media technology journal. It is interesting that you publish "important" and "seminal" research... :) Did you feel that the content of the journal met these ambitions?

    The paper seems interesting as a background/overview. Often, it is argued that research papers should have been written in a systematic way and that they should be trustworthy (reliable) (that the reader should be able to trust the conclusions etc.). Did you feel that the authors had evidence to back up their claims?

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. It is interesting to follow the discussions about the impact factor, espacially about high impact factors in media and communication areas. They are hard to find and if you find one it is getting harder and harder to understand the papers, because they are of high quality and so very technical and complex.
      Basically it seems to be a very good tool to see how good journals are cited and used! This is actually the best way to see, if the authors did a good job and created some great work. I think for later choosing the right material to work with at the Master thesis, this will be very worthful!

      Radera
  2. The comment about the journal as being "important" and "seminal" is something that they've put in their description themselves. However from the little experience that I have with the journal I find it very interesting and up to date with important research.

    Concerning the specific paper that read the conclusion wasn't so much a specific "result" of some sort of study but more a reasoning conclusion regarding the topic and why the topic is interesting to look at and why, and this I think that the authors backed up quite well.

    SvaraRadera