Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
• Many systems can exhibit inherent chaos. Philippe M. Binder and
Roderick V. Jensen have written a paper entitled
“Simulating cha‐
otic behavior with finite-state machines”
, which is about digital
computer simulations of chaos.
• An interdisciplinary program involving M.I.T., Harvard, and
Tufts involved teaching a technique that was entitled
“Simulating
chaos to teach order”
. They simulated an emergency on the border
between Chad and Sudan's troubled Darfur region, with students
acting as members of Doctors Without Borders, International
Medical Corps, and other humanitarian agencies.
• See also Joel Gascoigne's related essay,
“Creating order from chaos
Instructor Notes
1. Being a data scientist in an organization is often a chaotic expe‐
rience, and it's the data scientist's job to try to create order from
that chaos. So I wanted to simulate that chaotic experience for
my students throughout the semester. But I also wanted them to
know that things were going to be slightly chaotic for a peda‐
gogical reason, and not due to my ineptitude!
2. I wanted to draw out different interpretations of the word “chaos”
as a means to think about the importance of vocabulary, and the
difficulties caused in communication when people either don't
know what a word means, or have different ideas of what the
word means. Data scientists might be communicating with do‐
main experts who don't really understand what “logistic regres‐
sion” means, say, but will pretend to know because they don't
want to appear stupid, or because they think they ought to know,
and therefore don't ask. But then the whole conversation is not
really a successful communication if the two people talking don't
really understand what they're talking about. Similarly, the data
scientists ought to be asking questions to make sure they under‐
stand the terminology the domain expert is using (be it an as‐
trophysicist, a social networking expert, or a climatologist).
There's nothing wrong with not knowing what a word means,
but there is something wrong with not asking! You will likely find
that asking clarifying questions about vocabulary gets you even
more insight into the underlying data problem.
