Dear Terry
Please make accessible to us your portfolio of cases on which you base your claims, that is design projects and research that support your argument and demonstrate the validity of your claims, preferably real cases from business. Before you do that i dont think this discussion is going anywhere.
Best
Birger
Sendt from my mobile.
---- Terence Love skrev ----
Dear Ken,
Thank you for your message. I apologise and feel like the problem is more
that I'm not explaining things well enough.
There are many kinds of mathematics and many ways of using mathematics. All
of the three types of maths you listed can be used in design. They are used
in creative conceptual design in the more technical design fields.
They were not what I was referring.
I've tried to explain this same issue from multiple directions (I've lost
count) most recently in terms of concepts (modes and types of abstraction
etc) and examples. So far, I'm clearly not making the point. My apologies.
Phew - deep breath.
Let me step back to see if I can find another way to describe this
particular collection of ways of creative thinking using mathematics.
In the meantime, you might find a connection with one aspect of things
through the image in http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming
Best regards,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Friday, 9 May 2014 12:39 PM
To: PHD-DESIGN PHD-DESIGN
Subject: Re: Why designers need maths
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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