integrity – Page 38 – ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

Advising Grad Students in Good Faith (and What Every Grad Student Should be able to Get)

2014-06-12

An "I Quit" letter from 2009, serving as a powerful testament that sometimes, just sometimes, Academic Integrity wins. It also shows the two things every grad student should make sure to get -- or get out fast.
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Correlation and Causality

2014-06-11

Looking at the relationship between correlation and causality via an empirical analysis of the statistically significant relationship between the number of storks and the number of births. Yes, there's a paper on it. Also a reference to a website looking at spurious correlations.
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Interesting (but sadly underdeveloped and underused) Add-On: OpenComment

2014-06-10

Reference to an interesting browser plug-in that lets people comment on webpages independent of the people who control the webserver.
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Why “great” ideas need a reality check

2014-06-04

Argument for the tedious task of learning about the domain you are working in. With a link to a beautiful video that shows what imagination without knowledge can produce: nothing pretty.
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Clear Communication in Engineering and Science (including the social sciences)

2014-06-01

Why clear communication between engineering/science and others is so important. Emphasizing the role of visual communication and using the Challenger Disaster as example. Definitely not a light topic.
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A Creative Solution Regarding Consent to Organ Donation

2014-05-30

Organ donation is an important but very emotional topic. Whereas there are not enough organs available, there is a simple solution for the shortage.
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With self-reflection, take small doses only.

2014-05-13

When you use your idea infrastructure for the most personal project ever -- improving yourself -- take care not to take in too much too fast.
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Interesting Debate: “The State of Free Speech in America”

2014-04-29

Reference to a very interesting discussion on YouTube about free speech, and a few thoughts on it.
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A Short Comment About Digitizing Books

2014-04-24

When you digitize books by cutting them apart and transforming them into a DRM-free OCR'd PDF file -- what about the respect for the book and the respect for the author's work? Some answers.
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Laypeople’s access to scientific research when participating in research

2014-04-16

Times have changed in research, esp. in psychological research. Participants can now not only find out what you want to research, but also how you will analyze the data. At least, if you do online surveys.
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This is a private blog showing my opinions. If you have an issue with what I write here, either don’t read it or talk to me directly. Don’t waste your time — or mine — dragging my employer into matters where they hold no authority.

The institution I work for, or rather the people officially representing it, have already distanced themselves from this blog. I find this unnecessary, as I’ve clearly stated in the «About this Blog» section that this is a personal blog.

Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who lack the backbone to address their concerns directly and instead resort to passive-aggressive tattling to others. Such behavior strikes me as not only cowardly, but also spineless, gutless, and wholly unprincipled. Moreover, these efforts are as pathetic as they are futile.

That said, I might listen if you present compelling arguments and evidence, as constructive feedback is always welcome. Who knows? We might even both gain something valuable from the interaction.

A comment for those seeking to use this site for personal gain: Given the increase in requests, let me be clear. I write on this blog because I want to. It’s my hobby, my playground. Sometimes people point me to interesting products/services and I write about them. But any request regarding ads or sponsored placements ends up the trash without a reply. And if you think something would be of interest, differentiate yourself from the spammers by referring to a posting — in an intelligent way. (I get enough auto-generated mails to identify them immediately.)

BTW, posts can get updated after I published them if I spot spelling errors (not a native speaker) or think a different wording might improve precision and clarity.

This blog is not focused on a single topic, or method. As long as it is relevant to improving creativity (or allowing it in the first place), it's fair game.
Some postings on this blog deal with freedom, as I think that we need freedom of thought, of speech, of association, etc. pp. to solve mankind's problems. Thus, some postings may seem a bit remote when it comes to organizing creativity. Freedom is, however, the bedrock of creativity.
The heterogeneity of the postings can make reading this blog a bit cumbersome, at least if you are only interested in one topic. You can either use the search function (above), or use the categories or the tags to narrow down the postings you see.