I am on vacation and off-grid, probably getting cold and wet in the English Lake District. If you have withdrawal symptoms from this blog then follow the links to find out why you need a vacation too!
Gone walking posted on April 19th, 2017.
Digital detox with a deep vacation posted on August 10th, 2016.
Deep vacation posted on July 29th, 2015.
The advertising industry is becoming a pervasive influence on us – telling us how we should eat, dress, travel, vacation, borrow, bank, insure, think and vote. We are constantly bombarded with messages designed to induce us to buy goods or services that we don’t really need and that undermine progress towards a sustainable society [see my post ‘Old is beautiful‘ on May 1st, 2015].
Many services are offered to us for free in order to expose us to advertisements and to collect data about our habits and interests that are put to uses about which we know little. These issues became prominent last week with the allegations about the inappropriate use of data from Facebook by Cambridge Analytica [see for example the The Guardian on March 25th, 2016]. A number of organisations have reacted by closing down their Facebook pages [see for example Reuters on March 23rd, 2018] and a #deletefacebook movement has started [see for example The Guardian on March 25th, 2016, again]. I have joined them and deleted my Facebook page as well as disconnecting this blog from Facebook. Also, in a couple of weeks I plan to stop using Twitter to disseminate this blog; so, if you receive this blog via Twitter then please start to follow it directly.
Finally, the advertisements at the bottom of my blog posts will disappear because I am paying to use WordPress instead of allowing advertising to cover the costs. A side-effect of this change is a new url: realizeengineering.blog/ So please update your bookmarks,if it doesn’t happen automatically!
It used to be that you only had to compete with the view out of the window when you were talking to a group of people. Now, you have to compete with the view of the world available through people’s mobile devices. You know when your audience arrives and sets up their laptops that you have a challenge ahead of you. A few of them might be planning to take notes using their laptop but most will be distracted by the constant flow of information delivered by email and messaging applications. Of course, you can use the same technology to embellish your presentation and to hold their attention; but often the result is ‘death by Powerpoint’ and the audience retreats into their own worlds – doing their own thing.
There’s a nice quote from an interview with Eric Clapton in the San Diego Union Tribune (September 4th, 2005): ‘It’s very hard, so I try and make it as engaging as it can be. But you have to face the fact that, no matter how good it is, you can only hold their attention for a little while.‘ So, you have to plan you talk in small steps and to re-engage your audience at the start of each step. There needs to be a narrative and the same rules apply as when writing [see post entitled ‘Reader, Reader, Reader’ on April 15th, 2015]. Powerpoint is not a requisite nor a substitute but preparation is essential. As a group of undergraduate students told me during a recent visit to another university, they can easily spot the lecturers who prepare conscientiously and are worth listening to.
I am at a scientific conference this week where a wide range of speaking skills will be on display and I have my mobile devices with me to provide alternative stimulation. The real value of the conference is the opportunity to interact with other researchers in a community of knowledge and for that we need shorter talks and more time for discussion. But the mechanics of modern scientific conferences is a separate issue!
Image: view from lecture theatre on London campus where I taught science and technology leadership last year [see post entitled ‘Leadership is like shepherding‘ on May 10th, 2017].
In the 1979 Glenn Harris proposed an analytical hierarchy of models for estimating tactical force effectiveness for the US Army which was represented as a pyramid with four layers with a theatre/campaign simulation at the apex supported by mission level simulations below which was engagement model and engineering models of assets/equipment at the base. The idea was adopted by the aerospace industry [see the graphic on the left] who place the complete aircraft on the apex supported by systems, sub-systems and components beneath in increasing numbers with the pyramid divided vertically in half to represent physical tests on one side and simulations on the other. This represents the need to validate predictions from computational models with measurements in the real-world [see post on ‘Model validation‘ on September 18th, 2012]. These diagrams are schematic representations used by engineers to plan and organise the extensive programmes of modelling and physical testing undertaken during the design of new aircraft [see post on ‘Models as fables‘ on March 16th, 2016]. The objective of the MOTIVATE research project is to reduce quantity and increase the quality of the physical tests so that pyramid becomes lop-sided, i.e. the triangle representing the experiments and tests is a much thinner slice than the one representing the modelling and simulations [see post on ‘Brave New World‘ on January 10th, 2018].
At the same time, I am working with colleagues in toxicology on approaches to establishing credibility in predictive models for chemical risk assessment. I have constructed an equivalent pyramid to represent the system hierarchy which is shown on the right in the graphic. The challenge is the lack of measurement data in the top left of the pyramid, for both moral and legal reasons, which means that there is very limited real-world data available to confirm the predictions from computational models represented on the right of the pyramid. In other words, my colleagues in toxicology, and computational biology in general, are where my collaborators in the aerospace industry would like to be while my collaborators in the aerospace want to be where the computational biologists find themselves already. The challenge is that in both cases a paradigm shift is required from objectivism toward relativism; since, in the absence of comprehensive real-world measurement data, validation or confirmation of predictions becomes a social process involving judgement about where the predictions lie on a continuum of usefulness.
Sources:
Harris GL, Computer models, laboratory simulators, and test ranges: meeting the challenge of estimating tactical force effectiveness in the 1980’s, US Army Command and General Staff College, May 1979.
Trevisani DA & Sisti AF, Air Force hierarchy of models: a look inside the great pyramid, Proc. SPIE 4026, Enabling Technology for Simulation Science IV, 23 June 2000.
Patterson EA & Whelan MP, A framework to establish credibility of computational models in biology, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 129:13-19, 2017.
Realize Engineering 