4 ms·

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simplicity

21 points by john_horton 16y ago

chalst 16y ago
Hoisted from that page's comments: However, due to the nature of the publications today, nobody is going to be honest and say: "You know what, we really thought that this advanced technique was going to be better. We tried our best, as you can see, but the improvement is really tiny." There should be some credible way of reporting negative findings, which are surprising. There are journals, such as the Journal of Negative Results (http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr) for ecology, that do try to fill this gap. But they don't have the same impact value. This is fair enough, up to a point: you should be aiming for results that will change the field.
john_horton 16y ago
I wonder if some of the benefits of simplicity come from the reduced probability of making errors. I know that in my own research, I always try to use simple methods or at least augment more complex methods with graphics and simple methods. That being said, I think it is useful to know the complex methods, even if you don't use them.
petervandijck 16y ago
His examples are awesome. HN might be a good example too. Up/downvotes seems easy to improve upon, but perhaps most "improvements" would hardly make a dent.
drbaskin 16y ago
The title of this post seems to be a reference to the famous paper of Wigner titled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences." It is a very readable paper and I cannot recommend it highly enough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_...
- chalst 16y ago
  "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of X" has become a snowclone (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000350.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000350.h...). Check Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22the+unreasonable+effectiveness+of%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22the+unreasonable+effec...)
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
US accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb in the ocean (11 atomic bombs have been lost by the US total). Taking the opinion of fishermen, pilots, Navy officers, weather men etc, and simply averaging their estimations on a map the bomb was found in a day.
ehsanul 16y ago
Counterexample: I doubt the current implementation of pagerank+additions at Google is all that simple.

21 points by john_horton 16y ago

Hoisted from that page's comments: However, due to the nature of the publications today, nobody is going to be honest and say: "You know what, we really thought that this advanced technique was going to be better. We tried our best, as you can see, but the improvement is really tiny." There should be some credible way of reporting negative findings, which are surprising. There are journals, such as the Journal of Negative Results (http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr) for ecology, that do try to fill this gap. But they don't have the same impact value. This is fair enough, up to a point: you should be aiming for results that will change the field.

john_horton 16y ago

I wonder if some of the benefits of simplicity come from the reduced probability of making errors. I know that in my own research, I always try to use simple methods or at least augment more complex methods with graphics and simple methods. That being said, I think it is useful to know the complex methods, even if you don't use them.

petervandijck 16y ago

His examples are awesome. HN might be a good example too. Up/downvotes seems easy to improve upon, but perhaps most "improvements" would hardly make a dent.

drbaskin 16y ago

The title of this post seems to be a reference to the famous paper of Wigner titled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences." It is a very readable paper and I cannot recommend it highly enough. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_...

chalst 16y ago
"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of X" has become a snowclone (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000350.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000350.h...). Check Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22the+unreasonable+effectiveness+of%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22the+unreasonable+effec...)

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

US accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb in the ocean (11 atomic bombs have been lost by the US total). Taking the opinion of fishermen, pilots, Navy officers, weather men etc, and simply averaging their estimations on a map the bomb was found in a day.

ehsanul 16y ago

Counterexample: I doubt the current implementation of pagerank+additions at Google is all that simple.