
Bret Victor Redesigns Classic Strogatz Paper (2011) - jgamman
http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/
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owenversteeg
First, I have to say I love the redesigned paper. It's extremely intuitive and
easy to read even for people with very little background. In text form I
imagine it would be accessible to ten times fewer people at least.

I don't think all papers should be done this way, but it would be fantastic if
more were. Pop-science explanations of papers are almost always too simplistic
and almost nobody's going to read plain study texts unless they have to.

How to explain (somewhat) difficult concepts and ideas has been a sort of
hobby of mine for a while, everything from contributing to simple.wikipedia to
Reddit comments explaining new studies.

I'm actually thinking of starting a website to create "comic-style" (as the
author calls them) explanations of important papers and ideas in science.
Would anyone here be interested in writing or explaining papers or ideas? My
email's in my profile. Even just doing a bit of illustration or writing would
help.

I'm also trying to figure out papers and ideas that are important. I'd like to
also include some important things that aren't well explained on the internet
already, or are only well known within a specific field. Anyone have any
suggestions?

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scribu
> I'm actually thinking of starting a website to create "comic-style" (as the
> author calls them) explanations of important papers and ideas in science.

There already is a hub for such projects:
[http://explorabl.es](http://explorabl.es)

Perhaps you can get some inspiration and/or exposure through it.

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icc97
That's an interesting site but doesn't seem to be picking papers the first one
I picked up on was the Monty Hall game show problem which isn't a paper as far
as I know.

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icebraining
The Monty Hall problem was invented by Steve Selvin in a letter to The
American Statistician journal, and it's only inspired in the game show.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem)

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latexr
No doubt this “sequential art” and “comic-like format” notion was at least
partially inspired by Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics”[1]. By Bret’s own
admission, the book is one of the works that had “an extraordinary effect on
[his] life or way of thinking”[2].

I agree. That book is phenomenal.

[1]:
[http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/](http://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/)

[2]: [http://worrydream.com/#!/Links](http://worrydream.com/#!/Links)

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kelnage
I love it when people do take the time to do good information visualisation,
especially when it helps everyone understand a complex idea.

However, I do think that those who believe that all academic papers should
take this form fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of academic papers.
Sadly, most of these papers are not about improving universal knowledge -
instead they are simply attempting to convey to their peers some insight into
a commonly understood problem or question. Because they are aiming at such a
small target audience who have a deep understanding of the problem domain,
shorthand and skimping on explainatory visualisations is not only an
acceptable choice - it can make the difference between a paper being published
or not. Few academics have the time, experience or funding to make beautiful
visualisations - and those that can afford to spend them on that aspect often
do so in exchange for depth of insight - and thus they are often seen as less
valuable.

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twtw
This is consistent with my experience. Many papers seem to rely on unstated
conventions regarding the problem definition and use of variables. Say I'm not
in the "small target audience who have a deep understanding of the problem
domain," but would like to read and understand a paper. What's the usual
approach to overcome this barrier?

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tincholio
You'll most likely need to get acquainted with a significant chunk of the
literature in that domain. For the most part, papers are self-contained, but
they build on top of past work.

The best way is to work your way through the references cited. Often you'll
find a few that come up again and again. Read them, and you'll have gained a
bit more understanding on the topic. Rinse and repeat until you do understand
the problem and how it is commonly treated in the literature.

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indescions_2018
Wouldn't it be nice if research teams were able to publish their work in
easily accessible html5 interactive applications? Such as ConvNetJS for no
sweat browser based CNNs:

[https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs/)

But even with libraries such as D3.js for visualization. Or Tensorflow.js for
WebGL accelerated learning. Many scientists simply lack the front end skills
necessary to create usable demos. Which can mean an opportunity to reach out
to a team if you are looking for projects to work on.

[https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/)

We can also see where this is ultimately headed with the rise of electronic
lab "notebooks" such as JupyterHub for data science. We want an intelligent
interface, that could even understand human language to design experiments. It
needs to be scalable and distributable to large enterprise research teams
spanning multiple locations. Results have to be repeatable, obviously. And
with a single click, publishable to the entire scientific community and
general public.

What the future looks like is science "as a service"

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robotresearcher
> Wouldn't it be nice if research teams were able to publish their work in
> easily accessible html5 interactive applications?

Sounds nice. Who pays for this? Are you willing to trade less science for more
html5?

> What the future looks like is science "as a service"

It already is and always has been. Almost all science results are openly
available to read. The most significant bits are translated into digestible
textbooks within a handful of years.

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sktrdie
Sure and that's why we have science magazines like New Scientist, National
Geographic, Nature etc. They read papers most of us won't understand and
translate them into a form that is more approachable.

I would't want the actual scientist to also have to worry about the "design
representation" of their research. If their work is important enough, others
will do it for them.

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te7eyw8u
New Scientist is awful

~~~
kwhitefoot
So people have been saying for the last 30 years. Yet no one seems to care
enough to publish something better. Or even to suggest an alternative.

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andrepd
I think this sort of things are good for scientific divulgation, for the
general public, but a poor choice for communication between scientists. The
design choices that make for a great popular science article make for a bad
scientific paper. Plus, many ideas simply aren't amenable to simple pictorial
explanation like this one. Good effort nonetheless, but not something of
general applicability.

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gaurav_v
There was a recent interesting paper on the arXiv which argued that the
ubiquity of small-world networks was vastly overstated.

Can't find the paper anymore - did anyone else see this / have a link?

~~~
dpwm
I remember there was a paper regarding scale-free networks. I believe it was
discussed on HN a few months back:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16144867)

But I also (perhaps falsely) remember a discussion that seemed to challenge
the small-world networks as well, so that may not be the discussion I was
thinking of. I may not have engaged my brain at the time but I'd be surprised
if it was small-world networks given the widely-reproduced evidence for the
effect.

~~~
gaurav_v
Yes! That is the paper I had in mind! Thanks.

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Pulcinella
I will add that organic chemistry regualarly uses sequential art in the form
of chemical reaction mechanisms.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_mechanism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_mechanism)

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herrvogel-
This should have a (2011) tag.

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sctb
Thanks! Updated.

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stenl
I'm not sure what point Bret is trying to make here. Of course interactive
explanation can be powerful. As a complement to the actual paper, this can be
very valuable, similar to how the HTML version of a paper is useful in many
contexts.

But every scientific paper ever published will be around until the end of
humanity, whereas this interactive web page will surely disappear within a
decade or two. The scientific paper - a self-contained entity that can be
moved around, printed out, archived, searched and annotated - is an incredibly
powerful entity.

~~~
AriaMinaei
> whereas this interactive web page will surely disappear within a decade or
> two

The point you're raising is at the moment important, but ultimately
irrelevant.

The scientific paper in digital format when it was first produced, did not
have all the advantages of physical paper. Physical paper was easier to
archive (digital storage would corrupt easily), easier to move around (you
needed a computer to view a digital paper, and most people didn't have one;
networks were mostly non-existent), and easier to annotate.

These were all important things to consider at the time, but the technology
eventually caught up, and surpassed printed paper in most of not all aspects.

Keeping dynamic content consumable through the years, would be costlier than
keeping static content consumable. But the price isn't that high. Web
standards are designed with backward compatibility in mind, and the software
you use to view web content (browsers) is mostly open source. I'd imagine it'd
be much easier to view web content produced today in the 2030s, than it is for
us to play NES games produced in the 80s.

~~~
smackay
You are correct but is not enough for the technology to improve, there needs
to be some thought into making things forwards compatible too. Human readable
formats stand the best chance of being understood even if there is an
interruption in the advancement of civilisation. Paper obviously wins here.
The elephant in the room is of course the media on which the information is
stored. Paper is probably the most robust storage technology we have right
now.

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627467
Seems like many in this thread are thinking about conservation. Thats
positive.

Not all paper (papyrus, wood or stone) based documents remains till this day.
Effort was made to conserve it because, through different times, enough people
thought that knownledge was worth being remembered.

If a interactive paper is meaningful to enough people, it will be preserved.

~~~
whatshisface
You could say the same of oral traditions, which were also preserved: but that
doesn't mean that oral traditions are just as good (in terms of information
transfer) as written ones. Keeping up a digital paper would be much like an
oral tradition, with each new generation having to re-implement it for current
devices.

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martyvis
And of course, Chrome on Android uselessly offers "Simplified View" which
breaks the new visual flow of the document.

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jgamman
perhaps the point is also 'code to learn' \- i always thought archiving these
constructions would be an interesting way of seeing how tangentially educated
people can get themselves from their area of expertise to this result and a
fantastic resource for students or life long learners.

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sociallistener
nice

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Pulcinella
Speaking of Victor, this was just posted today:

[http://worrydream.com/NotesOnResonance/](http://worrydream.com/NotesOnResonance/)

HN article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16837654)

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nmca
Was this grey text on a white background for most people? I found that it made
me squint rather.

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acqq
It's unreadable for me. I suspect all "grey text is easier o read" people
either have bad monitors or wrongly configure them.

