Dear Ken,
So can we conclude that mathematics is an essential part of design?
Best Regards
Prabir
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> Dear Terry,
>
> Well, I must be several cards short of a deck. Or perhaps you have not
> explained it s l o w l y enough.
>
> First, you keep moving back and forth between different kinds of
> mathematics.
>
> You started with the demand that all design students study
> university-level mathematics to be able to work with mathematics as fluent,
> expressive language. Mathematicians and physicists use that kind of
> mathematics, and it is well above rocket science.
>
> Then you shifted to a kind of workaday high-school algebra mathematics.
> That’s the kind Lubomir talked about when he stated that he must have
> misunderstood your call for high-level expressive mathematics.
>
> At some points you seem to be talking about engineering mathematics. Now
> this is not expressive, but this is, in fact, rocket science mathematics.
> It’s the kind of mathematics that engineers use when they build a rocket or
> launch a spacecraft.
>
> On several occasions, we’ve been in a border zone. You say that we’re
> talking about simple arithmetic and algebra, but the kinds of problems you
> propose solving require higher levels of mathematical fluency.
>
> I won’t quote your original statement on what designers should be able to
> do mathematically or quote the passage that went too fast for Gunnar – and
> evidently for me. These descriptions appear in enough posts for any list
> member to find them.
>
> The grounds of your argument shift, the basis of your claims changes from
> post to post, but the answer is always that all design students should
> learn mathematics.
>
> It seems that your argument is that for human designers to have an
> advantage over computers, they must be able to do better than computers
> what computers do well. With the claim of representing and manipulating
> abstractions of abstractions, you can see why a simple fellow such as
> myself went wrong on the amounts of data involved.
>
> Your answers remain evasive on the main issues. In the world you claim is
> rushing toward us, computers will design. Most design users do not need
> high-end design services today.
>
> There is nearly no mathematics in most design education today.
>
> You argue, variously, for a design curriculum that graduates high-end
> designers who are skilled at one of three kinds of mathematics.
>
> (1) One is high-level, fluent mathematical language for expressive
> representation and manipulation. This is the level of mathematics required
> for mathematics, physics, and for research and practice in the exact
> sciences as well as for rigorous research in some of the behavioural
> sciences, including some forms of experimental psychology and economics.
>
> (2) The second is high-level mathematics at the level of manipulating data
> successfully. The is the kind of mathematics that engineers use, along with
> working chemists, some forms of financial engineering and accountancy, and
> – well, rocket science. Researchers also use this kind of mathematics for
> statistics in all fields, as well as for research in other branches of the
> behavioural sciences, including some forms of experimental psychology and
> economics.
>
> (3) The third is workaday arithmetic and algebra. Now I can’t see how you
> can do the kind of mathematics you call for with only arithmetic and
> algebra, but that’s probably because I am so poorly equipped for serious
> debate.
>
> Adding this to the curriculum would be an expensive process that will only
> be justified with a clear, understandable argument.
>
> This brings us back to a few simple questions. The first is why? You still
> haven’t answered that question.
>
> The second is how design students are to learn this. Your earlier answer
> was that today’s design teachers should take professional development
> courses to become mathematics teachers at the proper moments. Your proposal
> was that these design teachers should insert little mathematics lessons
> into every design course rather like downloading an app for an iPhone.
>
> To do this well, people would have to learn enough mathematics so that
> they would, in North American terms, have a design major and a mathematics
> minor. But we’re not talking about new university students. We are talking
> about graduated designers who have worked a different way for many years.
>
> As you have often explained to the PhD-Design list, design teachers today
> are generally incompetent in mathematics and uncomfortable working with
> mathematics. This is correct. People who are incompetent in a subject in
> which they are uncomfortable do not teach it well. So I’d be curious how
> this is to be done in an affordable way.
>
> But I understand that I’m already asking the wrong questions. Oh dear,
> indeed. If only you knew how difficult it is to be perpetually mistaken as
> I surely am. A clear explanation would surely help.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> --
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor |
> Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University
> email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private
> email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61
> 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
>
> Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
> Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James
> Cook University | Townsville, Australia
>
> —snip—
>
> Oh dear, Ken
>
> No. Ken, you are mistaken. I was writing bout maths in everyday design
> situations, not large datasets, though it can also be used in that way. The
> kind of use of maths I described depends on an ability to be able to flow
> to and fro between the concrete world and abstract accurate-enough
> structures that can predict. It doesn't need difficult maths - though you
> can go there if you want. Currently, designers do that flow with other
> kinds of abstract representations. Adding maths is just an extra dimension
> to that.
>
> Gunnar is closer to the mark in his understanding.
>
> An example, working out the best layout for an interface that will present
> information of different types at many different resolutions and screen
> sizes and has to work well for all of them and for old and young alike. A
> traditional design way is to make some images of different kinds of layouts
> and then try and work out (perhaps using lots of discussion and stakeholder
> collaboration) which ones work and fail and perhaps understand why at least
> a little and then revise with lots of cycles through the process creating
> more and more images until eventually finding something that might work -
> ish.
>
> Alternatively, one can represent what is known about screen layouts,
> readability, information distribution, usability, ergonomics etc in simple
> math. Then, imagine absolutely ALL the possible images that could be
> creatively invented using the traditional design approach. Think of this as
> the solution search space. Somewhere in all those zillions of possible
> images is the few that will work, and somewhere in that group are the ones
> that offer optimal designs. Now, see the simple maths above as a way of
> slicing away all the parts of the solution space in which solutions are
> unsatisfactory. What is left is a maths representation of a space of
> solutions with the best designs. Typically the maths is simple arithmetic
> and algebra - just repurposed and applied to design. Often it can be done
> using simple sketches of abstract phenomena. This is simple abstraction if
> design knowledge processed in and out of maths, it's not mathematical
> rocket science.
>
> —snip—
>
>
>
>
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