Search Results

Looking Back and Ahead

Daniel P. Steel

in Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science

This chapter summarizes those that went before and ends by sketching some open questions.

Extrapolation and Its Limits

Stephen Yablo

in Aboutness

If A implies B, then is there always something that we can point to as what A adds to B? The logician, or logical engineer, says yes. The mysterian says no. To get a bead on the issue, this chapter ... More

If A implies B, then is there always something that we can point to as what A adds to B? The logician, or logical engineer, says yes. The mysterian says no. To get a bead on the issue, this chapter distinguished four types of extrapolation: inductive, as in Hume, projective, as in Goodman, alethic, as in Kripkenstein, and type 4, as in Wittgenstein's “conceptual problem of other minds” and his example of 5 o'clock on the sun. Logical subtraction is understood, to begin with, as type 4 extrapolation. A–B is the result of extrapolating A beyond the bounds imposed by B. The question is whether this can always be done.Less

Modeling Ecological Niches

A. Townsend Peterson, Jorge Soberón, Richard G. Pearson, Robert P. Anderson, Enrique Martínez-Meyer, Miguel Nakamura, and Miguel Bastos Araújo

in Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions (MPB-49)

This chapter explains how environmental data can be used to create models that characterize species’ ecological niches in environmental space. It introduces a model, which is a function constructed ... More

This chapter explains how environmental data can be used to create models that characterize species’ ecological niches in environmental space. It introduces a model, which is a function constructed by means of data analysis for the purpose of approximating the true relationship (that is, the niche) in the form of the function f linking the environment and species occurrences. The chapter first considers the “meaning” of the function f that is being estimated by the algorithms before discussing the modeling algorithms, the approaches used to implement ecological niche modeling, model calibration, model complexity and overfitting, and model extrapolation and transferability. The chapter concludes with an overview of differences among methods and selection of “best” models, along with strategies for characterizing ecological niches in ways that allow visualization, comparisons, definition of quantitative measures, snf more.Less

Extrapolation and Heterogeneity

Daniel P. Steel

in Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science

This chapter introduces the general methodological challenges that confront extrapolation in the biological and social sciences, and sketches the outlines of the mechanisms approach to those ... More

This chapter introduces the general methodological challenges that confront extrapolation in the biological and social sciences, and sketches the outlines of the mechanisms approach to those challenges that is developed in the rest of the book.Less

Extrapolation, Capacities, and Mechanisms

Daniel P. Steel

in Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science

This chapter argues that previous accounts of extrapolation, either by reference to capacities or mechanisms, do not adequately address the challenges confronting extrapolation. It then begins the ... More

This chapter argues that previous accounts of extrapolation, either by reference to capacities or mechanisms, do not adequately address the challenges confronting extrapolation. It then begins the account of how the mechanisms approach can be developed so as to do better. The central concept in this account is what I term comparative process tracing.Less

Ceteris Paribus and Extrapolation

Daniel P. Steel

in Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science

This chapter further develops the mechanisms approach to extrapolation begun in chapter 5 and explores its relevance to the hotly debated issue of ceteris paribus laws. It argues that the ... More

This chapter further develops the mechanisms approach to extrapolation begun in chapter 5 and explores its relevance to the hotly debated issue of ceteris paribus laws. It argues that the difficulties that beset the most problematic type of ceteris paribus law vanish if “ceteris paribus” is interpreted as indicating an inference schema concerning extrapolation rather than as qualifying a universally quantified generalization.Less

Mathematics

G. E. R. Lloyd

in Disciplines in the Making: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Elites, Learning, and Innovation

This chapter explores the different ways in which what we can call mathematical investigations have been defined and practised in different societies. It argues that there is no one route that the ... More

This chapter explores the different ways in which what we can call mathematical investigations have been defined and practised in different societies. It argues that there is no one route that the development of mathematics had to, or did in practice, follow, once it became the subject of self-conscious inquiries. We have rich evidence on this issue from both ancient Greece and China in particular. Whereas some Greek mathematicians privilege demonstration in the axiomatic-deductive mode, Chinese mathematics was more concerned with heuristics and in growing the subject by extrapolation and analogy. There are also striking differences between Greek and Chinese, and understanding of the relation between mathematics and other areas of investigation, such as music theory and astronomy.Less

Epistemic Enhancers

Paul Humphreys

in Extending Ourselves: Computational Science, Empiricism, and Scientific Method

Extrapolation, conversion, and augmentation are three ways in which our natural observational and computational abilities can be extended. Examples of each are given and the possibility of and need ... More

Extrapolation, conversion, and augmentation are three ways in which our natural observational and computational abilities can be extended. Examples of each are given and the possibility of and need for a completely automated science is explored, with particular reference to the data explosion.Less

Wishful Extrapolation from Research to Patient Care

Charles F. Manski

in Patient Care under Uncertainty

This chapter critiques how evidence from randomized trials has been used to inform medical decision making. Trials have long enjoyed a favored status within medical research on treatment response and ... More

This chapter critiques how evidence from randomized trials has been used to inform medical decision making. Trials have long enjoyed a favored status within medical research on treatment response and are often called the “gold standard” for such research. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordinarily considers only trial data when making decisions on drug approval. The well-known appeal of trials is that, given sufficient sample size and complete observation of outcomes, they deliver credible findings about treatment response within the study population. However, it is also well-known that extrapolation of findings from trials to clinical practice can be difficult. Researchers and guideline developers often use untenable assumptions to extrapolate. The chapter refers to this practice as wishful extrapolation. It discusses multiple reasons why extrapolation of research findings to clinical practice may be suspect.Less

‘It Is One Story’: Writing a Global Alternate History in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt

Chris Pak

in Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction

Alternative histories create a ludic space where a game of allusion, extrapolation and speculation is played. Kim Stanley Robinson’s (2002) The Years of Rice and Salt depicts a world that might have ... More

Alternative histories create a ludic space where a game of allusion, extrapolation and speculation is played. Kim Stanley Robinson’s (2002) The Years of Rice and Salt depicts a world that might have developed had European civilisation been eradicated by the Black Death. This chapter examines how Robinson uses science fiction, utopia and the alternate history to examine and challenge assumptions about progress, memory, identity, culture and storytelling. It investigates how The Years of Rice and Salt portray the actors who make up the story of history, how this history is characterised and what repercussions these explorations have for reading the stories that make up contemporary “real-world” history.Less

Many Paths, One Journey: Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem Novels

Bradford Lyau

in Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction

Bradford Lyau, in “Many Paths, One Journey: Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem Novels,” carefully places Cixin Liu’s Three Body trilogy within both Chinese and Western literary traditions before offering ... More

Bradford Lyau, in “Many Paths, One Journey: Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem Novels,” carefully places Cixin Liu’s Three Body trilogy within both Chinese and Western literary traditions before offering a brief critical analysis of the first two books, where humanity struggles against an impending alien invasion and how humanity also faces its destiny. These two resonances with Western literature, both popular and elite, invite the reader to consider Liu’s novel’s different literary roots: 1) American genre science fiction, 2) the philosophical tale as it emerged in the West, 3) the role of philosophy in Chinese literature, and 4) Chinese science fiction.Less

Instrumental and Experimental Considerations

Eaton E. Lattman, Thomas D. Grant, and Edward H. Snell

in Biological Small Angle Scattering: Theory and Practice

Thic chapter describes some of the processes that are often carried out within specific data processing software associated with an instrument but are invisible to the user. It is useful to be aware ... More

Thic chapter describes some of the processes that are often carried out within specific data processing software associated with an instrument but are invisible to the user. It is useful to be aware of them. These include dealing with detector artifacts and limitations, and the integration of the signal from a two-dimensional image to produce a one-dimensional scattering profile, among other steps.Less

Thinking ahead

Marian Stamp Dawkins

in Through Our Eyes Only?: The Search for Animal Consciousness

This chapter begins with the most basic ideas of what is meant by thinking. It has to do with ‘working things out in the head’ and so one needs to devise some way of showing that this is what an ... More

This chapter begins with the most basic ideas of what is meant by thinking. It has to do with ‘working things out in the head’ and so one needs to devise some way of showing that this is what an animal is doing. One of the simplest kinds of working things out in the head is extrapolation – an animal is shown something which then disappears and it has to work out where the object will reappear, given that it is behaving in some predictable manner. So, for example, if a piece of food is being dragged along in a particular direction and then goes behind a screen, will the animal look for the food at the place where it disappeared (no extrapolation) or at the far end of the screen where it is due to reappear (true extrapolation)? An animal that could anticipate where something is due to reappear would be showing a rudimentary ability to work things out in its head.Less

Sauropod Histology: Microscopic Views on the Lives of Giants

Kristina Curry Rogers and Gregory M. Erickson

in The Sauropods: Evolution and Paleobiology

This chapter addresses the sauropod growth rates from the perspectives of bone histology, long bone growth, and developmental mass. It provides an overview of the evidence from living and fossil ... More

This chapter addresses the sauropod growth rates from the perspectives of bone histology, long bone growth, and developmental mass. It provides an overview of the evidence from living and fossil vertebrate taxa relevant to qualitative interpretations of sauropod bone tissue. A case study for Apatosaurus that incorporates all methods discussed in the text is then reported. Bone histology offers an exceptional tool for studying bone growth in dinosaurs at the microscopic level. The growth rates of dinosaurs depended on the size of the taxon of interest: the larger the dinosaur, the more rapid the overall body growth rate. Amprino's Rule suggests that laminar tissue in sauropods grew at the same basic range of rates that occurs in extant mammals and birds. Application of developmental mass extrapolation (DME) and longevity estimates provide quantified measures of growth rates for all stages of whole-body growth, including the exponential stage.Less

Style Investing

Michael Haliassos

in Financial Innovation: Too Much or Too Little?

The paper studies asset prices in an economy where some investors categorize risky assets into different styles and move funds among these styles depending on their relative performance. In this ... More

The paper studies asset prices in an economy where some investors categorize risky assets into different styles and move funds among these styles depending on their relative performance. In this economy, assets in the same style comove too much, assets in different styles comove too little, and reclassifying an asset into a new style raises its correlation with that style. The authors also predict that style returns exhibit a rich pattern of own- and cross-autocorrelations and that while asset-level momentum and value strategies are profitable, their style-level counterparts are even more so. The model is used to shed light on several style-related empirical anomalies.Less

Interpolation and extrapolation

Joseph F. Boudreau and Eric S. Swanson

in Applied Computational Physics

This chapter deals with two related problems occurring frequently in the physical sciences: first, the problem of estimating the value of a function from a limited number of data points; and second, ... More

This chapter deals with two related problems occurring frequently in the physical sciences: first, the problem of estimating the value of a function from a limited number of data points; and second, the problem of calculating its value from a series approximation. Numerical methods for interpolating and extrapolating data are presented. The famous Lagrange interpolating polynomial is introduced and applied to one-dimensional and multidimensional problems. Cubic spline interpolation is introduced and an implementation in terms of Eigen classes is given. Several techniques for improving the convergence of Taylor series are discussed, including Shank’s transformation, Richardson extrapolation, and the use of Padé approximants. Conversion between representations with the quotient-difference algorithm is discussed. The exercises explore public transportation, human vision, the wine market, and SU(2) lattice gauge theory, among other topics.Less

Alfred Bester: The Insider’s Outsider

Jad Smith

in Alfred Bester

The introduction examines how Bester’s unique approach challenged the paradigm of Golden Age science fiction. After a stint scripting comics and radio, Bester returned to the SF field in search of ... More

The introduction examines how Bester’s unique approach challenged the paradigm of Golden Age science fiction. After a stint scripting comics and radio, Bester returned to the SF field in search of creative freedom; however, a conflict with legendary editor John W. Campbell over the story “Oddy and Id,” among other circumstances, prompted Bester to assume the stance of an outsider and write against the grain of the Astounding ethos, which he came to regard as escapist and scientistic. Bester wanted to write “arrest” fiction “full of romantic curiosity” that left ample opportunity for the reader to cogenerate meaning and experience the euphoria of raw imagination. Bester’s approach is discussed in terms of Roland Barthes’s distinction between “readable” and “writable” fiction.Less

Empires of the Self: Autobiographical Novels

D. Harlan Wilson

in J. G. Ballard

Much of Ballard’s fiction extrapolates experiences from his own life. His entire canon might be viewed as an effort in self-fashioning and the creation of his own image even as he played with ... More

Much of Ballard’s fiction extrapolates experiences from his own life. His entire canon might be viewed as an effort in self-fashioning and the creation of his own image even as he played with readers’ assumptions about himself as well as the role of the author. This chapter investigates Unlimited Dream Company, Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, a pseudo-autobiographical trilogy that fictionalize Ballard’s life and imaginatively represent various “empires of the self.” Whereas Empire and Kindness are among his most realistic novels, Unlimited is his most oneiric and fantastical, although all of them involve technological affect and show him disentangling memories of conflict, complication and compliance.Less

Jocular Juvenilia

Gary Westfahl

in Arthur C. Clarke

This chapter argues that Clarke’s fiction falls into two categories: farcical pieces filled with adolescent humor--his juvenilia and later texts described as his “mature juvenilia”; and his ... More

This chapter argues that Clarke’s fiction falls into two categories: farcical pieces filled with adolescent humor--his juvenilia and later texts described as his “mature juvenilia”; and his professional science fiction, which manifests only occasional, and subdued, touches of humor. The young Clarke prefers parodies, puns, wordplay, and slapstick, and he displays a rather cruel sense of humor in jocularly describing various deaths and catastrophes. Yet some early works also show Clarke developing his skill in extrapolation and the development of future worlds as well as his interests in outer space and the oceans. Pieces recalling Clarke’s juvenilia surface through his career, and similar material may someday be discovered in his private journals.Less