Accéder au contenu principal

Articles

Affichage des articles du mai, 2020

T.3-4: Misleading graphs

A graph helps visualize a large amount of data, but it can also be misleading. But cheating is not the same as lying because the graph can deceive the reader without the conscious intervention of its designer: a deceitful graph can be built by accumulating errors or approximations. However, some people may be suspected of violating the duties of ethical conduct. Visual manipulation: How concerned are you about the Zika virus? I chose this graphic which is produced by a local news station NBC 2 in Florida in 2016 , they surveyed its viewers concerning their reflections on the Zika virus. It’s obvious that they really wanted to make this graph appear as if people weren't worried about Zika virus. We can see that the percentages and the graph heights don't match which presents a kind of visual manipulation. False correlations: As we all know correlation can be measured by the Pearson coefficient r which detects the presence or absence of a linear relations

T2: What is science?

When we hear the word ‘science’ first thing comes in mind is physics, mathematics, labs... but none of these truly embodies ‘science’. And if we want to come out with a specific definition of science then again we will end with different ones.   Through this course, César Tomé's paper proposes a definition of the word science that has drawn my attention: In the first place, he defines science as a «systematic search for knowledge whose validity does not depend on a specific individual or epoch and which is open to anyone who wants to verify their findings or reproduce their experiments". That means that knowledge is the target of all scientists, whatever their research field, but that doesn’t mean that any investigation that leads to knowledge is necessarily science.   Science it's only that process which rely on systematic research that anyone could verify its results at any time. Then, he added that "This research is framed within a systemic and organiz