Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/01/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Steve LeHuray wrote, in part: > > And to the best of my knowledge > every scientific endeavor from Anthropology to cancer to film emulsion to > snow shovels to yacht design has some baseline numbers attached to it. > Hehe. Reseach is often divided into two categories: qualitative and quantitative. Fields of research such as anthropology and ethnography are employed in qualitative research, where the focus in on understanding issues such as qualitative differences, significance, and meaning. I'm not an anthropologist, but I've been exposed to ethnography as part of designing interactive systems: These are used by people, and people and their actions are not easily reduced to numbers. You'd be hard pressed to find any respectible anthropological/ethnographical study reduced to some baseline numbers ;) Off-topic, and as an interesting sideline, the Western world's (or perhaps modern civilization's even) preoccupation with quantifiable measures is an testiment to the impact that Descarte's thinking has had. A common reaction today is that if it cannot be expressed in numbers, then it either doesn't exist, or is some mushy New Age concept. Conversly, proponents of mushy New Age concepts will often casts their ideas in numbers, so as to lend an air of respectability to it. Take lens/car/yacht/hi-fi/wine/toothpick testing, for instance. Quite often, the test will consist of some opinionated indivudual who plays around with the lens/car/yacht/hi-fi/wine/toothpick for half a week, assigns half a dozen numbers to various attributes of the item under scrutiny, concludes by adding or averaging the numbers, and then publicly proclaims that "This is a 9.6 toothpick". They are actually doing themselves a disservice: Because they think that numbers means objectivity and objectivity means science, and science means respectibility, they shortcut this to think that numbers mean respectibility. However, philosphically, it can be argued that NOTHING is objective (which makes for some really interesting discussions, preferably with red wine involved, but I won't go into the details here), but even by the commonly accepted (in Western philosophy) standards of objectivity/subjectivity these tests cannot be considered objective. Assigning numbers to them only clouds the real issues at hand and make it harder for people to appreciate the value of the tests, since we end up arguing about the numbers, rather than reading the tests and thinking about how the tester's tastes/opinions/situation differs QUALITATIVELY from ours (that which Mike J was so eloquently taking about). My point? There is no shortcut for not thinking. While reading equipment tests will, in a round about way, give us access to stuff we might otherwise not learn anything about, it cannot make up our minds for us. There are too many variables involved, and they're not orthogonal in any case. Even in the most "rigorous" tests, such as Erwin's MTF evaluations, there is still subjectivity in terms of agreeing upon what to test, how to read charts, how equipment is calibrated, what equipment is used, and ultimately (and least accessible) a whole, massive, shared understanding about what the world consists of and what is real and what is not. Want an example? Bokeh was nonsense twenty years ago (and still is to some). It didn't exist. We still cannot reduce it to a simple number, but now there is some doubt to the infallibility of MTF testing in capturing all important (and existing) characteristics of a lens. (Steve, sorry, not ranting at you, but you sparked ideas that have been brewing for some while... ;) M. - -- Martin Howard | "Very funny Scotty. Now beam down Interactive Systems Designer | my clothes." email: mvhoward@mac.com | www: http://mvhoward.i.am/ +---------------------------------------