On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 5:06 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The contribution of the Power Law Indicator hypothesis is to repurpose the
> above knowledge into a design tool to help identify efficiently and with
> low cost which classes of design solutions are likely to be most effective.
>
Terry
I don't want to turn this discussion into the usual, long arduous PhD
design debates, so I will limit myself to one response (and then shut up).
Your goal is laudatory. But I don't see the evidence. My best information
is that power-law distributions come from certain statistical properties of
the elements involved. For example, in psychological measurements, if
equal ratios lead to equal psychological judgements, then there is a power
law at play.
(In sound, where I is the intensity of the physical waveform for some
signal and L(I) is the psychological assessment of its loudness, if:
L(10*I)/L(I) = 2, independent of the value of I
That is, if a sound ten times as intense as another always seems twice as
loud
this leads to a power law of loudness: L = I^n (where n = 0.3: Loudness
increases as the cube root of Intensity.)
I see no interactions here.
--
To prove your hypothesis I either need a lot of empirical data showing that
Power Law phenomena involving human social groups only occur If and Only If
(IFF) there is social interaction among the people/groups. (Or the weak
form, .. *tends* to occur where there is social interaction and *tends not *to
occur otherwise).
or
A nice mathematical formulation of why this would be the case.
----
It would be really nice if your hypothesis were true, for all the reasons
you mention. So I am not arguing that it is false: I am saying that you
have not made the case. Yet.
Enough
Don
--
Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>"
(DOET2).
Course: Udacity On-Line course based on
DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101> (free).
Real Soon Now.
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