STATISTICAL GRAPHICS: MAPPING THE PATHWAYS OF SCIENCE

This chapter traces the evolution of statistical graphics starting with its departure from the common noun structure of Cartesian determinism, through William Playfair's revolutionary grammatical shift to graphs as proper nouns, and alights on the modern conception of graph as an active participant in the scientific process of discovery. The ubiquitous availability of data, software, and cheap, high-powered, computing when coupled with the broad acceptance of the ideas in Tukey's 1977 treatise on exploratory data analysis has yielded a fundamental change in the way that the role of statistical graphics is thought of within science-as a dynamic partner and guide to the future rather than as a static monument to the discoveries of the past. We commemorate and illustrate this development while pointing readers to the new tools available and providing some indications of their potential.

Background: Dissociations between proper and common names following brain damage have frequently been reported (see Yasuda, Nakamura, & Beckman, 2000, for review) and suggest that these different word classes are processed by distinct mechanisms. The dissociations are often observed in people with relatively pure impairments, but might also be expected more generally in aphasia. There is the further possibility that the different vocabulary groups require different therapy approaches. Yet, to our knowledge, no study has explored whether treatments that are known to be successful with common nouns are also successful with proper nouns.Aims: This study had two main aims: to compare the comprehension and production of common and proper nouns in 20 people with aphasia; and to investigate whether semantic naming therapy is equally effective for common and proper nouns.Methods & Procedures: A total of 20 people with aphasia were tested in their ability to comprehend and produce matched sets of proper and common nouns. The stimuli comprised: 20 famous people, 20 famous places, 20 high‐familiarity common nouns, and 20 low‐familiarity common nouns. Participants were also tested with personally relevant proper names, such as the names of family members. In the second phase of the study 10 of the original participants were given semantic therapy for both common and proper nouns. Experimental measures explored effects on treated and untreated words.Outcomes & Results: Initial testing found that comprehension scores were generally high, with no word class effect. In production, proper nouns were significantly more difficult to name than the matched common nouns. However, this finding excluded personally relevant proper nouns, which were the most successfully named items. Results from the second phase showed that semantic therapy was equally effective in improving naming of both common and proper nouns. As in many previous studies, effects were almost entirely confined to treated items.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that proper nouns induce more naming failures in aphasia than common nouns. However, despite this, they seem equally amenable to therapy. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Introduction Disturbance in naming accuracy and reaction time (RT) is one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Naming performance can be considered a diagnostic key in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which has remained diagnostically challenging. Although most of the studies in this field have been conducted on the naming accuracy of common nouns, others have shown that proper nouns are more sensitive for detecting the onset of AD. This study aims to compare the naming of common and proper nouns. Method Eighty pictures of common and proper nouns (40 items each) were presented to 18 healthy older adults and 18 people with mild Alzheimer’s disease using DMDX software on a laptop computer. The patients’ responses were transcribed into a pre-designed form, and their reaction times were captured by DMDX. Results Study results indicated a significant difference in the number of errors and RTs between proper and common nouns in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (p-value=), implying that proper nouns may be more sensitive to mild AD. Moreover, patients with mild Alzheimer’s had more problems in common and proper nouns than healthy older adults. Conclusion This study demonstrated that individuals with mild AD experienced greater difficulty recalling proper nouns, which were found to be more susceptible to the effects of AD.

BackgroundDisturbance in naming accuracy and reaction time (RT) is one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Naming performance can be considered a diagnostic key in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), which has remained diagnostically challenging. Although most of the studies in this field have been conducted on the naming accuracy of common nouns, others have shown that proper nouns are more sensitive for detecting the onset of AD. This study aims to compare the naming of common and proper nouns.MethodEighty pictures of common and proper nouns (40 items each) were presented to 18 healthy older adults and 18 people with mild Alzheimer's disease using DMDX software on a laptop computer. The patients’ responses were transcribed into a pre‐designed form, and their reaction times were captured by DMDX.ResultStudy results indicated a significant difference in the number of errors and RTs between proper and common nouns in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (p‐value=), implying that proper nouns may be more sensitive to mild AD. Moreover, patients with mild Alzheimer's had more problems in common and proper nouns than healthy older adults.ConclusionThis study demonstrated that individuals with mild AD experienced greater difficulty recalling proper nouns, which were found to be more susceptible to the effects of AD.

Sustaining positive perceptions of science in the face of conflicting health information: An experimental test of messages about the process of scientific discovery

The goal of this study was to further investigate hemispheric specialization for proper and common nouns by examining the ability of individuals with left hemisphere damage (LHD) to perceive and verbally reproduce famous names and matched common names compared with the performance of matched healthy controls (HC). Ten individuals with LHD due to stroke and 16 age- and education-matched HC completed recognition and production tasks of famous proper and common nouns. All tasks were designed as split-visual field experiments, modelled after the study done by Ohnesorge and Van Lancker. Results contribute to a better understanding of hemispheric roles in perception and production of famous proper nouns, suggesting that (1) both hemispheres can recognize famous proper nouns, possibly due to a right hemisphere role in personal relevance and (2) production of proper nouns as well as common nouns is associated with left hemisphere.

Proper and common nouns: Form class judgments in Broca's aphasia

Any scientific discovery must include an epistemic process to gain knowledge of or to ascertain the existence of some empirical and/or logical entailments previously unknown or unrecognized. This paper proposes a new programming paradigm, named epistemic programming, which regards entailments as the subject of computing, takes three primary epistemic operations, i.e., epistemic deduction of knowledge, epistemic expansion of knowledge, and epistemic contraction of knowledge, as basic operations of computing, and regards epistemic processes as the subject of programming. The paper presents a relevant logic model of epistemic processes in scientific discovery. Based on the model, the paper defines what is an epistemic program and shows some important issues to implement an epistemic programming system for scientists to program their epistemic processes in scientific discovery.

The present study examines the dynamics of the kanji combinations that form common (or general) and proper nouns in Japanese. The following three results were obtained. First, the degree of distribution results from two similar processes which are based on a steady-state of birth-and-death processes with different birth and death rates, resulting in a positive negative binomial distribution with the proper nouns and in a positive Waring distribution with common nouns. Second, all rank-frequency distributions follow the negative hypergeometric distribution used very frequently in ranking problems. Third, the building of kanji compounds follows a dissortative strategy. The higher the outdegree of a kanji, the more it prefers kanji with lower indegrees. A linear dependence can be observed with common nouns, whereas the relationship between compounded kanji is rather curvilinear with proper nouns. The actual analytical expression is not yet known.

Proper nouns are particular nouns that identify a unique person, place, thing, or idea, and they are generally easy to identify. But the age of computer technology has introduced new sets of words that seem so important yet lack the true distinction of proper noun, and I too have fallen prey to the technological times; cringing as the word internet usurps its common place in the world of nouns and bestows upon itself a capital I . The internet is a shortening of the word inter and network. In 1986, the U.S. Department of Defense used the word internet to describe “the linked computer networks of the U.S. Defense Department” [1]. As institutions developed their own internet systems, the word intranet emerged as a way to differentiate the internal system from the one and only internet. Yet, Internet justifiers and internet detractors have voiced their concerns. Justifiers of the capital I argue that the Internet is a unique thing, and they encourage users to capitalize the I when referring to the Internet and a lowercase i when speaking of an internet system. Detractors cite other common nouns that have not reached proper nouns status and argue that the internet has not earned the place of proper noun. Some publications (the London Times and others) have decided to use a lower case i , while other publications keep the capital I. The argument hinges on usage. Internet detractors and internet justifiers voice valuable opinions about the use of common and proper nouns. Although the editors of the Journal of Medical Toxicology have never established a formal policy on the use of the word internet, it defers to general rules of grammar when identifying common and proper nouns. I tend to argue that the internet has not earned the same right as the Theory of Relativity or surpassed the common rights of the universe because the internet loosely refers to a “vast computer network linking smaller computers worldwide” [2]. The internet shares the same conceptual definition as the one and only universe, a common noun that links a whole.

This paper presents some significant fundamental observa-tions and/or assumptions on scientific discovery processes and their automation, shows why classical mathematical logic, its various classical conservative extensions, and traditional (weak) relevant logics cannot satisfactorily underlie epistemic processes in scientific discovery, and presents a strong relevant logic model of epistemic processes in scientific discovery.KeywordsScientific DiscoveryEpistemic StateBelief RevisionScientific ReasoningProgramming ParadigmThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Trundling along in essentially the same form for some 220 million years, turtles have seen dinosaurs come and go, mammals emerge, and humankind expand its dominion. Is it any wonder the persistent reptile bested the hare? In this engaging book, physiologist Donald Jackson shares a lifetime of observation of this curious creature, allowing us a look under the shell of an animal at once so familiar and so strange. Here we discover how the turtle's proverbial slowness helps it survive a long, cold winter under ice. How the shell not only serves as a protective home but also influences such essential functions as buoyancy control, breathing, and surviving remarkably long periods without oxygen, and how many other physiological features help define this unique animal. Jackson offers insight into what exactly it's like to live inside a shell - to carry the heavy carapace on land and in water, to breathe without an expandable ribcage, to have sex with all that body armor intervening. Along the way we also learn something about the process of scientific discovery - how the answer to one question leads to new questions, how a chance observation can change the direction of study, and above all how new research always builds on the previous work of others. A clear and informative exposition of physiological concepts using the turtle as a model organism, the book is as interesting for what it tells us about scientific investigation as it is for its deep and detailed understanding of how the enduring turtle 'works'.

The terms "common noun" and "proper name" encode two dichotomies that are often conflated. This paper explores the possibility of the other combinations—"common name" and "proper noun"—and concludes that both exist on the basis of their morphosyntactic behavior. In support of common names, inflectional regularization is determined to result from a "name" layer in the structure, meaning that common nouns that regularize are, in fact, common names (computer mouses, tailor’s gooses). In support of proper nouns, there are bare singular count nouns in English that receive definite interpretations and seem to be licensed as arguments by the same null determiner as proper names (I left town, she works at home). Not only does a four-way distinction between nouns, names, proper nouns, and proper names achieve greater empirical coverage, but it also captures the independent morphosyntactic effects of [PROPER] and [NAME] as features on D and N, respectively.

From the Publisher: Wagman offers a critical analysis of current theory and research in the psychological and computational sciences, directed toward the elucidation of scientific discovery processes and structures. It discusses human scientific discovery processes, analyzes computer scientific discovery processes, and makes a comparative evaluation of the two. This work examines the scientific reasoning of the discoverers of the inhibition mechanism of gene control; scientific discovery heuristics used at different developmental levels; artificial intelligence and mathematical discovery; the ECHO system; the evolution of artificial intelligence discovery systems; the PAULI system; and the KEKADA system. It concludes with an examination of the extent to which computational discovery systems can emulate a set of 10 types of scientific problems.

The syntactically definable category of proper nouns is only a subclass of the orthographically definable class. Many capitalized nouns, e.g. Kodak and Purex, are not members of the syntactically definable class. Further, the syntactic proper nouns are a subclass of the countable nouns of English. Proper nouns permit the selection of essentially the same set of determiners as other countable nouns, differing materially only in that they require a zero allomorph of unstressed the when singular and when not preceded by a restrictive adjective or followed by a restrictive relative clause. Proper nouns, like other countable nouns, are freely pluralizable. Allowing free selection of determiners and numbers with proper nouns obviously simplifies the statement of selectional restrictions with regard to determiners, numbers, and nouns, and at the same time simplifies the statement of the selectional restrictions that hold between a noun phrase and its appositive noun phrase. These syntactic gains are not dissipated in semantic losses. Allowing free selection does not permit the generation of semantic anomalies. Determiner plus proper noun constructions are not semantically peculiar. Grimm means the same thing in Grimm wrote the book as in The famous Grimm wrote the book; thus it seems pointless to conclude that Grimm is being 'used as' a common noun in the latter.