User:Akake

If you are unfamiliar with Bourbaki, he wasn't a person, but a committee of mathematicians writing under a single pseudonym. If you never like proofs, Nicholas Bourbaki was probably one reason why. 8^) I recall yet another book where a colleague of John von Neumann being berated by von Neumann saying:       YOUR kind of visualizing mind can't see .... So von Neumann didn't care of visualizing.

While I think visualization has a "future" (I place it somewhere between warm superconductors and cold fusion [closer to ws, above the mid-point]), I think it will take some time to gain acceptance. No, there are no controlled studies (If you want controlled studies, I have a short book I can suggest [just gave the reference to A. van Dam]). Who wants to pay for controlled studies? It costs an arm and a leg to develop any way, and that is the problem. We want a researcher paying for someone else's research? We are working on the infrastructure of the tool and not doing our own science, and I believe that is what irks a few people in this era of tight budgets.

For most sciences it is best used during the earlier formative stages of ideas. A few can use it in more detailed analysis.

Regarding pictures as science, another book: This Austin Post photo,..., provides enough information for a one hour glaciological lecture. 1990 This is an awesome claim. Only a hacker-viz person (Helman's term) would appreciate this. What single computer graphical rendering can make a claim even close to this?* Most of us (perhaps a younger TV-based generation) would get bored looking at one picture for an hour. Remember, the wonder of new worlds? Well, maybe in 1980 I could have looked at a single Voyager image of Jupiter for an hour. We don't yet have graphical renderings of real world calibrator photos.

some graphics can remove extraneous details. Most graphics are merely oversimplified models of real-world complexity. While some sciences don't have to deal with the real world, others do. That's the limit (and purpose) of simulation.
 * This has to be a generalization (Polya) because it can be argued that

Questions to ponder: Why is justice blindfolded? Do we need legal visualization? Lawyers have more money. Would lawyers pay for its development? Why do scientists distrust magic and alchemy and pseudoscience? Do you need a user manual to use a magnifying glass?

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene This is the Usenet: do you expect anything other than gross generalizations? Ref: for the above ask. Two I have at finger tips, one I have to get.