12 ms·

Bret Victor Redesigns Classic Strogatz Paper (2011)

206 points by jgamman 9y ago

indescions_2018 9y ago
Wouldn't it be nice if research teams were able to publish their work in easily accessible html5 interactive applications? Such as ConvNetJS for no sweat browser based CNNs: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/ https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/ But even with libraries such as D3.js for visualization. Or Tensorflow.js for WebGL accelerated learning. Many scientists simply lack the front end skills necessary to create usable demos. Which can mean an opportunity to reach out to a team if you are looking for projects to work on. https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ We can also see where this is ultimately headed with the rise of electronic lab "notebooks" such as JupyterHub for data science. We want an intelligent interface, that could even understand human language to design experiments. It needs to be scalable and distributable to large enterprise research teams spanning multiple locations. Results have to be repeatable, obviously. And with a single click, publishable to the entire scientific community and general public. What the future looks like is science "as a service"
- aygirlcitemeplz 9y ago
  jesus fuck no..... "it needs to be scalable and distributable to large enterprise research teams spanning multiple locations." 'What the future looks like is science "as a service"' the day this happens is the day I stop studying TCS and start working on autonomous weapons. If we are going to let the world burn I might as well have fun participating..
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  > Wouldn't it be nice if research teams were able to publish their work in easily accessible html5 interactive applications? Sounds nice. Who pays for this? Are you willing to trade less science for more html5? > What the future looks like is science "as a service" It already is and always has been. Almost all science results are openly available to read. The most significant bits are translated into digestible textbooks within a handful of years.
stenl 9y ago
I'm not sure what point Bret is trying to make here. Of course interactive explanation can be powerful. As a complement to the actual paper, this can be very valuable, similar to how the HTML version of a paper is useful in many contexts. But every scientific paper ever published will be around until the end of humanity, whereas this interactive web page will surely disappear within a decade or two. The scientific paper - a self-contained entity that can be moved around, printed out, archived, searched and annotated - is an incredibly powerful entity.
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  An HTML representation is still self-contained in that it can gracefully degrade to mere text and images.
- AriaMinaei 9y ago
  > whereas this interactive web page will surely disappear within a decade or two The point you're raising is at the moment important, but ultimately irrelevant. The scientific paper in digital format when it was first produced, did not have all the advantages of physical paper. Physical paper was easier to archive (digital storage would corrupt easily), easier to move around (you needed a computer to view a digital paper, and most people didn't have one; networks were mostly non-existent), and easier to annotate. These were all important things to consider at the time, but the technology eventually caught up, and surpassed printed paper in most of not all aspects. Keeping dynamic content consumable through the years, would be costlier than keeping static content consumable. But the price isn't that high. Web standards are designed with backward compatibility in mind, and the software you use to view web content (browsers) is mostly open source. I'd imagine it'd be much easier to view web content produced today in the 2030s, than it is for us to play NES games produced in the 80s.
  - smackay 9y ago
    You are correct but is not enough for the technology to improve, there needs to be some thought into making things forwards compatible too. Human readable formats stand the best chance of being understood even if there is an interruption in the advancement of civilisation. Paper obviously wins here. The elephant in the room is of course the media on which the information is stored. Paper is probably the most robust storage technology we have right now.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sktrdie 9y ago
Sure and that's why we have science magazines like New Scientist, National Geographic, Nature etc. They read papers most of us won't understand and translate them into a form that is more approachable. I would't want the actual scientist to also have to worry about the "design representation" of their research. If their work is important enough, others will do it for them.
- te7eyw8u 9y ago
  New Scientist is awful
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    So people have been saying for the last 30 years. Yet no one seems to care enough to publish something better. Or even to suggest an alternative.
- AriaMinaei 9y ago
  > I would't want the actual scientist to also have to worry about the "design representation" of their research. If their work is important enough, others will do it for them. In reality though, that barely ever happens.
- Too 9y ago
  More like they read papers most of us won't understand and deliberately misinterpret it to create catchy headlines.
kelnage 9y ago
I love it when people do take the time to do good information visualisation, especially when it helps everyone understand a complex idea. However, I do think that those who believe that all academic papers should take this form fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of academic papers. Sadly, most of these papers are not about improving universal knowledge - instead they are simply attempting to convey to their peers some insight into a commonly understood problem or question. Because they are aiming at such a small target audience who have a deep understanding of the problem domain, shorthand and skimping on explainatory visualisations is not only an acceptable choice - it can make the difference between a paper being published or not. Few academics have the time, experience or funding to make beautiful visualisations - and those that can afford to spend them on that aspect often do so in exchange for depth of insight - and thus they are often seen as less valuable.
- twtw 9y ago
  This is consistent with my experience. Many papers seem to rely on unstated conventions regarding the problem definition and use of variables. Say I'm not in the "small target audience who have a deep understanding of the problem domain," but would like to read and understand a paper. What's the usual approach to overcome this barrier?
  - tincholio 9y ago
    You'll most likely need to get acquainted with a significant chunk of the literature in that domain. For the most part, papers are self-contained, but they build on top of past work. The best way is to work your way through the references cited. Often you'll find a few that come up again and again. Read them, and you'll have gained a bit more understanding on the topic. Rinse and repeat until you do understand the problem and how it is commonly treated in the literature.
- toxik 9y ago
  Another important distinction is that absolutely not everything is even close to visualizable in short sweet diagrams.
latexr 9y ago
No doubt this “sequential art” and “comic-like format” notion was at least partially inspired by Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”[1]. By Bret’s own admission, the book is one of the works that had “an extraordinary effect on [his] life or way of thinking”[2]. I agree. That book is phenomenal. [1]: http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/ http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/ [2]: http://worrydream.com/#!/Links http://worrydream.com/#!/Links
herrvogel- 9y ago
This should have a (2011) tag.
- sctb 9y ago
  Thanks! Updated.
nmca 9y ago
Was this grey text on a white background for most people? I found that it made me squint rather.
- acqq 9y ago
  It's unreadable for me. I suspect all "grey text is easier o read" people either have bad monitors or wrongly configure them.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
owenversteeg 9y ago
First, I have to say I love the redesigned paper. It's extremely intuitive and easy to read even for people with very little background. In text form I imagine it would be accessible to ten times fewer people at least. I don't think all papers should be done this way, but it would be fantastic if more were. Pop-science explanations of papers are almost always too simplistic and almost nobody's going to read plain study texts unless they have to. How to explain (somewhat) difficult concepts and ideas has been a sort of hobby of mine for a while, everything from contributing to simple.wikipedia to Reddit comments explaining new studies. I'm actually thinking of starting a website to create "comic-style" (as the author calls them) explanations of important papers and ideas in science. Would anyone here be interested in writing or explaining papers or ideas? My email's in my profile. Even just doing a bit of illustration or writing would help. I'm also trying to figure out papers and ideas that are important. I'd like to also include some important things that aren't well explained on the internet already, or are only well known within a specific field. Anyone have any suggestions?
- scribu 9y ago
  > I'm actually thinking of starting a website to create "comic-style" (as the author calls them) explanations of important papers and ideas in science. There already is a hub for such projects: http://explorabl.es http://explorabl.es Perhaps you can get some inspiration and/or exposure through it.
  - icc97 9y ago
    That's an interesting site but doesn't seem to be picking papers the first one I picked up on was the Monty Hall game show problem which isn't a paper as far as I know.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      The Monty Hall problem was invented by Steve Selvin in a letter to The American Statistician journal, and it's only inspired in the game show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
Pulcinella 9y ago
Speaking of Victor, this was just posted today: http://worrydream.com/NotesOnResonance/ http://worrydream.com/NotesOnResonance/ HN article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837654
Pulcinella 9y ago
I will add that organic chemistry regualarly uses sequential art in the form of chemical reaction mechanisms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_mechanism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_mechanism
martyvis 9y ago
And of course, Chrome on Android uselessly offers "Simplified View" which breaks the new visual flow of the document.
sociallistener 9y ago
nice
jgamman 9y ago
perhaps the point is also 'code to learn' - i always thought archiving these constructions would be an interesting way of seeing how tangentially educated people can get themselves from their area of expertise to this result and a fantastic resource for students or life long learners.
andrepd 9y ago
I think this sort of things are good for scientific divulgation, for the general public, but a poor choice for communication between scientists. The design choices that make for a great popular science article make for a bad scientific paper. Plus, many ideas simply aren't amenable to simple pictorial explanation like this one. Good effort nonetheless, but not something of general applicability.
gaurav_v 9y ago
There was a recent interesting paper on the arXiv which argued that the ubiquity of small-world networks was vastly overstated. Can't find the paper anymore - did anyone else see this / have a link?
- dpwm 9y ago
  I remember there was a paper regarding scale-free networks. I believe it was discussed on HN a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144867 But I also (perhaps falsely) remember a discussion that seemed to challenge the small-world networks as well, so that may not be the discussion I was thinking of. I may not have engaged my brain at the time but I'd be surprised if it was small-world networks given the widely-reproduced evidence for the effect.
  - gaurav_v 9y ago
    Yes! That is the paper I had in mind! Thanks.

206 points by jgamman 9y ago

indescions_2018 9y ago

Wouldn't it be nice if research teams were able to publish their work in easily accessible html5 interactive applications? Such as ConvNetJS for no sweat browser based CNNs: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/ https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/ But even with libraries such as D3.js for visualization. Or Tensorflow.js for WebGL accelerated learning. Many scientists simply lack the front end skills necessary to create usable demos. Which can mean an opportunity to reach out to a team if you are looking for projects to work on. https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ We can also see where this is ultimately headed with the rise of electronic lab "notebooks" such as JupyterHub for data science. We want an intelligent interface, that could even understand human language to design experiments. It needs to be scalable and distributable to large enterprise research teams spanning multiple locations. Results have to be repeatable, obviously. And with a single click, publishable to the entire scientific community and general public. What the future looks like is science "as a service"

aygirlcitemeplz 9y ago
jesus fuck no..... "it needs to be scalable and distributable to large enterprise research teams spanning multiple locations." 'What the future looks like is science "as a service"' the day this happens is the day I stop studying TCS and start working on autonomous weapons. If we are going to let the world burn I might as well have fun participating..
robotresearcher 9y ago
> Wouldn't it be nice if research teams were able to publish their work in easily accessible html5 interactive applications? Sounds nice. Who pays for this? Are you willing to trade less science for more html5? > What the future looks like is science "as a service" It already is and always has been. Almost all science results are openly available to read. The most significant bits are translated into digestible textbooks within a handful of years.

stenl 9y ago

I'm not sure what point Bret is trying to make here. Of course interactive explanation can be powerful. As a complement to the actual paper, this can be very valuable, similar to how the HTML version of a paper is useful in many contexts. But every scientific paper ever published will be around until the end of humanity, whereas this interactive web page will surely disappear within a decade or two. The scientific paper - a self-contained entity that can be moved around, printed out, archived, searched and annotated - is an incredibly powerful entity.

BjoernKW 9y ago
An HTML representation is still self-contained in that it can gracefully degrade to mere text and images.
AriaMinaei 9y ago
> whereas this interactive web page will surely disappear within a decade or two The point you're raising is at the moment important, but ultimately irrelevant. The scientific paper in digital format when it was first produced, did not have all the advantages of physical paper. Physical paper was easier to archive (digital storage would corrupt easily), easier to move around (you needed a computer to view a digital paper, and most people didn't have one; networks were mostly non-existent), and easier to annotate. These were all important things to consider at the time, but the technology eventually caught up, and surpassed printed paper in most of not all aspects. Keeping dynamic content consumable through the years, would be costlier than keeping static content consumable. But the price isn't that high. Web standards are designed with backward compatibility in mind, and the software you use to view web content (browsers) is mostly open source. I'd imagine it'd be much easier to view web content produced today in the 2030s, than it is for us to play NES games produced in the 80s.
- smackay 9y ago
  You are correct but is not enough for the technology to improve, there needs to be some thought into making things forwards compatible too. Human readable formats stand the best chance of being understood even if there is an interruption in the advancement of civilisation. Paper obviously wins here. The elephant in the room is of course the media on which the information is stored. Paper is probably the most robust storage technology we have right now.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sktrdie 9y ago

Sure and that's why we have science magazines like New Scientist, National Geographic, Nature etc. They read papers most of us won't understand and translate them into a form that is more approachable. I would't want the actual scientist to also have to worry about the "design representation" of their research. If their work is important enough, others will do it for them.

te7eyw8u 9y ago
New Scientist is awful
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  So people have been saying for the last 30 years. Yet no one seems to care enough to publish something better. Or even to suggest an alternative.
AriaMinaei 9y ago
> I would't want the actual scientist to also have to worry about the "design representation" of their research. If their work is important enough, others will do it for them. In reality though, that barely ever happens.
Too 9y ago
More like they read papers most of us won't understand and deliberately misinterpret it to create catchy headlines.

kelnage 9y ago

I love it when people do take the time to do good information visualisation, especially when it helps everyone understand a complex idea. However, I do think that those who believe that all academic papers should take this form fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of academic papers. Sadly, most of these papers are not about improving universal knowledge - instead they are simply attempting to convey to their peers some insight into a commonly understood problem or question. Because they are aiming at such a small target audience who have a deep understanding of the problem domain, shorthand and skimping on explainatory visualisations is not only an acceptable choice - it can make the difference between a paper being published or not. Few academics have the time, experience or funding to make beautiful visualisations - and those that can afford to spend them on that aspect often do so in exchange for depth of insight - and thus they are often seen as less valuable.

twtw 9y ago
This is consistent with my experience. Many papers seem to rely on unstated conventions regarding the problem definition and use of variables. Say I'm not in the "small target audience who have a deep understanding of the problem domain," but would like to read and understand a paper. What's the usual approach to overcome this barrier?
- tincholio 9y ago
  You'll most likely need to get acquainted with a significant chunk of the literature in that domain. For the most part, papers are self-contained, but they build on top of past work. The best way is to work your way through the references cited. Often you'll find a few that come up again and again. Read them, and you'll have gained a bit more understanding on the topic. Rinse and repeat until you do understand the problem and how it is commonly treated in the literature.
toxik 9y ago
Another important distinction is that absolutely not everything is even close to visualizable in short sweet diagrams.

latexr 9y ago

No doubt this “sequential art” and “comic-like format” notion was at least partially inspired by Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”[1]. By Bret’s own admission, the book is one of the works that had “an extraordinary effect on [his] life or way of thinking”[2]. I agree. That book is phenomenal. [1]: http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/ http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/ [2]: http://worrydream.com/#!/Links http://worrydream.com/#!/Links

herrvogel- 9y ago

This should have a (2011) tag.

sctb 9y ago
Thanks! Updated.

nmca 9y ago

Was this grey text on a white background for most people? I found that it made me squint rather.

acqq 9y ago
It's unreadable for me. I suspect all "grey text is easier o read" people either have bad monitors or wrongly configure them.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

owenversteeg 9y ago

First, I have to say I love the redesigned paper. It's extremely intuitive and easy to read even for people with very little background. In text form I imagine it would be accessible to ten times fewer people at least. I don't think all papers should be done this way, but it would be fantastic if more were. Pop-science explanations of papers are almost always too simplistic and almost nobody's going to read plain study texts unless they have to. How to explain (somewhat) difficult concepts and ideas has been a sort of hobby of mine for a while, everything from contributing to simple.wikipedia to Reddit comments explaining new studies. I'm actually thinking of starting a website to create "comic-style" (as the author calls them) explanations of important papers and ideas in science. Would anyone here be interested in writing or explaining papers or ideas? My email's in my profile. Even just doing a bit of illustration or writing would help. I'm also trying to figure out papers and ideas that are important. I'd like to also include some important things that aren't well explained on the internet already, or are only well known within a specific field. Anyone have any suggestions?

scribu 9y ago
> I'm actually thinking of starting a website to create "comic-style" (as the author calls them) explanations of important papers and ideas in science. There already is a hub for such projects: http://explorabl.es http://explorabl.es Perhaps you can get some inspiration and/or exposure through it.
- icc97 9y ago
  That's an interesting site but doesn't seem to be picking papers the first one I picked up on was the Monty Hall game show problem which isn't a paper as far as I know.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    The Monty Hall problem was invented by Steve Selvin in a letter to The American Statistician journal, and it's only inspired in the game show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Pulcinella 9y ago

Speaking of Victor, this was just posted today: http://worrydream.com/NotesOnResonance/ http://worrydream.com/NotesOnResonance/ HN article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837654

Pulcinella 9y ago

I will add that organic chemistry regualarly uses sequential art in the form of chemical reaction mechanisms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_mechanism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_mechanism

martyvis 9y ago

And of course, Chrome on Android uselessly offers "Simplified View" which breaks the new visual flow of the document.

sociallistener 9y ago

nice

jgamman 9y ago

perhaps the point is also 'code to learn' - i always thought archiving these constructions would be an interesting way of seeing how tangentially educated people can get themselves from their area of expertise to this result and a fantastic resource for students or life long learners.

andrepd 9y ago

I think this sort of things are good for scientific divulgation, for the general public, but a poor choice for communication between scientists. The design choices that make for a great popular science article make for a bad scientific paper. Plus, many ideas simply aren't amenable to simple pictorial explanation like this one. Good effort nonetheless, but not something of general applicability.

gaurav_v 9y ago

There was a recent interesting paper on the arXiv which argued that the ubiquity of small-world networks was vastly overstated. Can't find the paper anymore - did anyone else see this / have a link?

dpwm 9y ago
I remember there was a paper regarding scale-free networks. I believe it was discussed on HN a few months back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144867 But I also (perhaps falsely) remember a discussion that seemed to challenge the small-world networks as well, so that may not be the discussion I was thinking of. I may not have engaged my brain at the time but I'd be surprised if it was small-world networks given the widely-reproduced evidence for the effect.
- gaurav_v 9y ago
  Yes! That is the paper I had in mind! Thanks.