Another common mistake in least squares fitting

On p. 121 of Eloquent Science, I spend a page discussing the misuses of linear correlation. Turns out I didn’t cover all of them. Mark Hibberd writes: I think your Figure 11.10 [to the right] clearly shows a very common mistake of inappropriately using a standard least squares fit. The fit given (y = -13.2 […]

Use of first person in writing (a cross-disciplinary thought experiment)

I recently attended a workshop on writing across the disciplines at the University of Manchester run by Alex Baratta. The group spent a lot of time discussing how each of our own disciplines uses the first person in academic writing. After the discussion went on for a while, I offered the following model. What does […]

Proper spellings of atmospheric science words

Did you know that shortwave radiation is not hyphenated, but short-wave trough is? Did you know that air mass is two words when used as a noun, but one word when used as an adjective (e.g., airmass modification)? If you are ever wondering how scientific words are spelled or used, the American Meteorological Society has […]

Bad Writing and Bad Thinking

Russ Schumacher pointed me to this article from the The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Bad Writing and Bad Thinking” by Rachel Toor. Call me simple-minded, call me anti-intellectual, but I believe that most poor scholarly writing is a result of bad habits, of learning tricks of the academic trade as a way to try to […]

Terrible use of jargon

———————————————————- 2010-04-05 The Future of Family Science Stan J. Knapp of Brigham Young University conditionally prognosticates a jargon-free future for his fellow family scientists: “Authorizing Family Science: An Analysis of the Objectifying Practices of Family Science Discourse,” Stan J. Knapp, Journal of Marriage and Family, vol. 64, no. 4 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1038-1048. . Knapp […]

A figure in need of help

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 […]

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

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 […]

A great title (Bryan 2005)

I was recently reminded of this paper by my colleague George Bryan. Bryan, G. H., 2005: Spurious convective organization in simulated squall lines owing to moist absolutely unstable layers. Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 1978–1997. I love this title. This title has all of Lipton’s five characteristics of an effective title. Informative The title has all […]

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