Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Synopsis
There is great value in being able to provide a brief insightful summary of an elaborate
experiment, a complicated theory or a multi-faceted discussion. Suppose one of us gets
on an elevator and the only other passenger is a four-star general. She smiles and asks
“How is your research going?” This is one of those rare opportunities when a scientist
can actually influence policy, resource allocation and the direction of science by being
able to communicate effectively. Almost invariably the opportunity is lost because sci-
entists and generals rarely speak the same language. However, there is a trick that one
can employ to anticipate this rare event and that is to have something worked out in
advance so as not to waste the opportunity. This is the “elevator description” of the
most significant research that has been done. In another age it might have been called
the “
Reader's Digest
” version.
That is the position the authors find themselves in now. We believe that we ought to
provide a brief but insightful summary of the topic you have just completed in a way
that conveys the maximum amount of information, but without the mathematics that
was necessary to make that information understandable when it was first presented. To
accomplish this goal we review the high points of each of the chapters and then attempt
to tie them all together into a coherent picture.
In the first chapter we argued that normal statistics do not describe complex webs.
Phenomena described by normal statistics can be discussed in terms of averages. The
fact that human populations are well represented by normal distributions of heights
strongly influences the manufacturing of everything from the size of shoes, shirts and
slacks to cars, computers and couches. The relative numbers of shirts in the small,
medium and large sizes are determined by our knowledge of the average build of indi-
viduals in the population. The distribution of sizes in the manufactured shirts must
match the population of buyers or the shirt factory will soon be out of business. Thus,
the industrial revolution was poised to embrace the world according to Gauss and the
mechanistic society of the last two centuries flourished. But as the connectivity of the
various webs within society became more complex the normal distribution receded fur-
ther and further into the background until it was completely gone from the data, if not
from our attempted understanding.
The world of Gauss is attractive, in part, because it leads to consensus. A process
that has typical outcomes, real or imagined, enables people to focus attention on one or
a few quantities and, through discussion, decide what is important about the process.
Physicians do this in deciding whether or not we are healthy. They measure our heart
