En aquel Imperio, el Arte de la Cartografía logró tal Perfección que el Mapa de una sola Provincia ocupaba toda una Ciudad, y el Mapa del Imperio, toda una Provincia. Con el tiempo, estos Mapas Desmesurados no satisficieron y los Colegios de Cartógrafos levantaron un Mapa del Imperio, que tenía el Tamaño del Imperio y coincidía puntualmente con él. Menos Adictas al Estudio de la Cartografía, las Generaciones Siguientes entendieron que ese dilatado Mapa era Inútil y no sin Impiedad lo entregaron a las Inclemencias del Sol y los Inviernos. En los Desiertos del Oeste perduran despedazadas Ruinas del Mapa, habitadas por Animales y por Mendigos; en todo el País no hay otra reliquia de las Disciplinas Geográficas.
[Del rigor en la ciencia, Jorge Luis Borges]

Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta random. Mostrar todas as mensagens
Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta random. Mostrar todas as mensagens

2011-09-19

On induction, Bertrand Russell


[...] But the real question is: Do any number of cases of a law being fulfilled in the past afford evidence that it will be fulfilled in the future? If not, it becomes plain that we have no ground whatever for expecting the sun to rise to-morrow, or for expecting the bread we shall eat at our next meal not to poison us, or for any of the other scarcely conscious expectations that control our daily lives. It is to be observed that all such expectations are only probable; thus we have not to seek for a proof that they must be fulfilled, but only for some reason in favour of the view that they are likely to be fulfilled.
Now in dealing with this question we must, to begin with, make an important distinction, without which we should soon become involved in hopeless confusions. Experience has shown us that, hitherto, the frequent repetition of some uniform succession or coexistence has been a cause of our expecting the same succession or coexistence on the next occasion [...].
[...] We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
[no original]
[existem (pelo menos) duas traduções portuguesas - António Sérgio - Desidério Murcho]

2011-09-15

Beautiful visualization, O'Reilly

lido aos bocados pela internet... se cada autor colocar o seu capítulo online...

Table of Contents

Ch. 1: On Beauty, Noah Iliinsky

Ch. 3: Wordle. Jonathan Feinberg
 As word clouds mais bonitas do planeta.
O código para construir a visualização não está disponível, mas o de análise de texto sim.
E depois a interface alternativa do Wordle permite indicar frequências.

Ch. 6: Flight Patterns: A Deep Dive. Aaron Koblin with Valdean Klump
Dados de tráfego aéreo, processados no Processing e visualizados no Google Maps inter alia.

Ch. 9: The Big Picture: Search and Discovery. Todd Holloway
Ch. 12: Turning a Table into a Tree: Growing Parallel Sets into a Purposeful Project. Robert Kosara
Ch. 13: The Design of “X by Y”. Moritz Stefaner
Ch. 14: Revealing Matrices. Maximilian Schich
Ch. 17: Immersed in Unfolding Complex Systems. Lance Putnam et al.