A figure in need of help
April 7, 2010 Filed under Blog, Featured, Posters, Presentations, Writing
I ran across this figure from an American Meteorological Society journal article recently. It’s just a simple scatterplot, which is so easy to construct, yet this figure has so many problems. 1. False alarm ratio and probability of detection are both quantities that can have values between 0 and 1, but the x axis ranges […]
Scott Adams on criticism
This quote could be applied to the review process… “If there is one thing you should always seek in a job, it’s the opportunity to criticize people who are more skilled than you are. This kind of work is both satisfying and easy.” —Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert
Bob The Angry Flower: It’s vs Its
On “Breaking the Rules”
The more I lecture on the importance of good communication and the more I point people to what I think are good scientific communication styles, the last thing I would want would be for some people to take these recommendations too seriously. Although I seem to offer such “rules” in my book, in my workshops, […]
Whether to use colons in titles
March 30, 2010 Filed under Blog, Popular, Presentations, Writing
In Eloquent Science, I discuss my thoughts about colons in titles of scientific articles on pp. 24-25, but only briefly. Dave Mechem (University of Kansas) emailed me to express concern about their overuse in some disciplines like geography, humanities, and some of the social sciences. For an example, take a look at this issue of […]
