Posts Tagged ‘experiment’
I’m lost: 8 characters described and presented in the first chapter…
The most interesting purpose in great novels is the complex description of the interactions among characters.
If even only 4 of the main characters are presented and thoroughly described in the first chapter, I am lost if they are not mentioned and refreshed in the successive chapters.
Just think of the number of interactions among only 4 characters: 6 interactions between 2 characters, 4 among three characters and one among all four characters…
Human brain is not able to keep all these interactions alive and refreshed at any moment: You need to keep written notes and refer to them every time a new interaction is happening… And this not fun and defeats the purpose of enjoying a fiction novel.
Unless a third of the interactions are “refreshed” in every single chapter, it is very difficult to keep track of the story and assimilate what the author is putting forth as controversial ideas, or tacit conspiratorial attitudes…
Unless the novel is read in one setting…
Unless each chapter grabs you from the first sentence…
What if 8 characters are set forward in the first chapter? What can you do?
“Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi is not a novel. It is a diary and memories of a period in this Islamic Republic of Iran.
Azar decided to set up weekly sessions for 8 of her former students in literature and discuss and keep diaries of the novels they read… The purpose was for the girls in this restrictive and theocratic regime to be affected by the independent minds of characters, particularly the female gender, their outlook to life, how it gelled perception about themselves, independently of external realities of the living…
I discovered the girls in the following chapters, as if their description in first chapter were redundant, since I forgot most of the description…
What saves this highly interesting book:
1. Chapters are self-contained
2. My good background knowledge and interest in Iran makes this book highly important
3. I read with Azar many novels that I didn’t read before, and enjoyed the in-depth characerizations of the heros and heroines
4. Azar studied in the same university in the USA: The univ. of Oklahoma at Norman…
5. I got to be acquainted with literature departments…
Now, you say that my rational premise of 4 main characters are one too many is just a hypothesis. It may be so. For the case of my simple mind, this is a fact.
In any case, I suggest to set up series of experiment to research my hypothesis.
The objectives are:
1. to discover the optimal number of main characters for the retention and emotional effects on a reader.
2. what is the better structure of the novel in order to maximize the personal effect of each character in the fiction story.
Experiment One:
For Group 1,
1. Select three characters and physically describe them accurately before writing a short story for each character.
2. Administer a questionnaire for comprehension and recollection of the characteristics of the person (physically and psychologically)
For Group 2,
1. Tell the stories of three characters first, and end the story with a thorough detailed description of the characters that were not included in the initial story version
2. Administer a questionnaire for comprehension and recollection of the characteristics of the person (physically and psychologically)
Experiment Two:
A month later, administer the same questionnaire to the two groups of people and analyze how well the characters were retained and recollected.
Experiment Three:
Repeat this experiment with 5 characters and then 7 characters
Experiment Four:
Repeat all these experiment using only pictures of the characters, no word physical description.
The experiments are simple. However, the quality of the stories and how the questionnaire is designed and well articulated, and what kinds of “data” are measured and captured… are the main difficulties that need to be ironed out and a lot of time invested in…
These experiments can be altered to extract the kinds of author’ styles that infuse the best impact.
For example, the stories of each character can be taken from different novels of the same author. The results will compare authors styles and additional pieces of information.
Obviously, the subjects in the experiments must be familiar with the connotations and exact meaning of each described attribute…
Note: You may read one of my 11 reviews of “Reading Lolita in Tehran” http://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/reading-lolita-in-tehran-by-azar-nafisi-part-1/
“How to tell long and good stories from human factors graphs?”
Article #33, (Feb. 28, 2006)
If we concentrate on a graph we might generate a long story that span many disciplines and furnish us with a wealth of information and knowledge that pages of words barely can convey. A graph might open the gate for dozen of questions that are the foundation of scientific, experimental, and critical thinking.
Suppose that we are comparing the efficiency in energy consumption between walking bare feet or wearing shoes that weight 1.3 Kg. Considering the walking speed as the other independent variable, along with the type and weight of shoes, we observe that the curves show that we are consuming less energy at low speed, then both curves decreasing to a minimum consumption of 0.2 KJ/Nm and intersecting at around 80 meter/min and then increasing as walking speed increases.
This graph is telling us that casual walking consumes less energy per unit walking effort than fast walking and that, at a cut off speed of 80 meter/min, the energy consumption is equal for both foot wares. Some people might jump to the conclusion that this cut-off speed can be generalized to all foot wears, but more experiments are necessarily needed to verify this initial hypothesis.
Another piece of information is that after the cut-off speed, it is more economical in energy to walk barefoot. Basically, this graph is saying that the more weight you add to your lower limbs the more energy you should expect to spend, a fact that is not an earth shattering observation.
Biomechanics tells us that the structure of our body is not geared toward saving on our muscular effort, but to increasing our range and speed of movements. Most of our muscles are connected to the bones of our limbs and their respective joints in manners they have to exert great effort and many fold the weight of our body members to overcome any of our limb’s mass.
Usually, the tendons of our muscles are inserted to the limb bones, close to the joints, and thus the muscles have to exert a huge effort to overcome the moment of the bone and flesh weight in order to effect a movement. Any extra mass to our limbs will tax our muscles to produce many folds the additional weight.
There is a caveat however; if you wrapped a weight of 1.3 kg around your ankles and walked bare feet you would consume more energy than without the added weight, but the curve would be parallel to the previous curve and not increasing more steepily than walking with shoes weighting 1.3 Kg. Consequently, the variation in the behavior of the graphs result from a combination of added weight and lesser static coefficient of friction exerted by the shoes on the walking surface than the bare foot..
Thus, what this graph does not mention is the static coefficient of friction between the footwear and the ground, and which is the most important variable and in this case, can concatenate many independent and control variables such as the materials of the footwear and the type of ground into a unique independent variable of coefficient of friction.
The higher the coefficient of friction the easier it is to move and progress and thus walking faster for the same amount of effort invested. It is not that important to generate muscle force if the reaction force on the surface cannot be produced to move a person in the right direction. For example, it is extremely difficult to move on slippery surfaces no matter how much muscular effort we generate. Apparently, the shape and skin texture of our foot provide a better and more efficient coefficient of friction than most foot wears.
However, the most important fact of this simple experiment is showing us the behavior of the curves and offering additional hypotheses for other studies.
What this graph is not telling us is the best story of all, and which can excite the mind into further investigation. For example, what kind of earth materials are we walking on; sands, asphalt, rough terrains, slippery roads or grassy fields? Does the sample of bare feet walkers include aboriginals used in walking bare feet, city dwellers, and people from the province? Does the sample includes groups of people according to the softness of their feet skins or the size of feet?
May be the shape of the curves are the same for females as well, but it would be curious to find out the magnitude of variations compared to males. It is clear that a simple and lousy graph delved us into the problems of experimentation and raised enough questions to attend to various fields of knowledge.
In the final analysis, the question is how relevant is this experiment practically? How far can a modern man walk bare feet? Does any economy in energy compensate for the ache, pain and injuries suffered by walking bare feet? Would athletes be allowed to compete bare feet if it is proven to increase performance and break new records? Does anyone care of walking barefoot in order to save a few kilo Joules?
The theme of this article is that you can venture into many fields of knowledge, just by focusing your attention on graphs and tables and permitting your mind to navigate into uncharted waters through queries and critical thinking.
“What do Human Factors measure?”
Article #41, started on April 5, 2006
This article is an ongoing project. The dependent variables or performance measurements adopted by Human Factors/Ergonomics are varied and should be judiciously selected to correspond to the tasks, systems, methods, and purposes.
The professionals in the field of human factors, depending on their primary discipline and interest, consider appropriate performance measurements for the types of controlled experiments, evaluation, or testing methods… They want to either answer practical problems, which cannot be resolved by the traditional methods, analyze systems’ feasibility and performance or oriented toward basic research.
These dependent variables should be necessarily directly related with the essential human factors performance criteria, of mainly reducing errors in the operations, safe usage of products/systems, and health concerns of workers and end users.
Many of these measurements and their corresponding techniques and procedures were initially developed by psychologists who were attuned to the practical facets of their discipline, and how their research can be applied to engineer design of interfaces, between target users and systems, as man-made systems are growing increasingly in complexity and becoming essential in running the functioning of our daily lives.
For example, I posed a problem to class for participation. We were to evaluate two warning alarms used in factories and to decide which product to select.
I asked them what could be the potential, valid, and effective dependent variables for this evaluation. Obviously, the first answer was to measure how loud the alarm is. This variable would not do: alarms are designed to be loud to alert workers and employees, but the data on how many of them heard the alarm going off will certainly not provide a decisive choice.
The next step was to make the students think about the real purpose of having a warning alarm. Obviously, warning alarms are produced to warn against the existence of fumes, the starting of fire, a serious danger, or a drill. Suppose you were conducting a drill, then what you might be interested to observe and record?
At this junction ideas started to fuse from every corner; the noise of the alarm should be jarring and very uncomfortable to the ears, visual stimuli should be designed in the product such as in police cars, automatic connections to fire brigades should be contemplated when installing warning alarms, more than one exit door should be opened, emergency exit doors should not be blocked by inventory materials.
Now, where the warning alarm should be installed? Should it be next to the emergency door because this is the normal direction where heads turn to, or in the opposite direction because the reaction of people is to move in a direction away from the warning noise?
I meant to explain the fundamentals of evaluation methodology and ended up with practical answers, which is fine and encouraging, but we had to get back to methodology and what could be the most appropriate safety measure.
Most probably, how many workers actually vacated the premises on hearing the alarm could be a good starting decision variable. Better, how many vacated within a standard duration in accordance with safety regulations might be an improved measuring stick.
At this stage, there was confusion in discriminating among, controlled experimentation, evaluation, and testing methods as well as the differences among dependent, independent and control variables.
Obviously, what we were discussing was testing the effectiveness of warning devices since evaluation is targeted for the packaged deal that includes after sales services, maintenance, repair, instructions manuals, extra commendable features, and so forth.
In addition to rating each specification, evaluation methods might consider comparing end-users behaviors such as like/dislike, acceptance, or rejection depending on psychological preference judgments.
That in testing the warning devices the main factor is the products was not straightforward to the students because we were considering among other factors. For example, the frequency range of the alarm, whether it is in the lower or upper frequency scale, the timber of the alarm, the loudness range and levels to manipulate, the characteristics of the background noise, the layout of the facility, the type of noises emanating from the machinery and equipment the outdoor noise level, the characteristics of the workers and their hearing deficiencies, and how the workers were initiated with drills, safety warnings and instructions.
What could be the performance measures for warning products in controlled experimentation? In this case the investigator needs:
First, to select objective, accurate, and reliable measurements such as the increase in heart beats above individual baselines, or the duration needed before the heart beat return to its resting level, or the reaction time for any changes in the dilation of the pupil of the eyes, or other physiological characteristics that are not highly correlated among themselves if more than one dependent variables are used.
Second, the purpose in controlled experimentation is to select the characteristic of sound or noise that best affect the outcome of the study in order to design a performing warning alarm with the purpose of eventually reaching design guidelines for products/systems, and
Third that the conditions and location of the experiment have to allow the repeatability of the experiment.
More than one session is necessary to sort out the difficulties and distortions in the untrained experimental mind.
However, we agreed that in testing the warning alarms we need to control important factors that might affect the results such that we need to test all the selected warning alarms in each one of the facilities, in every location that they might be installed, during the day and night shifts, in the morning, after lunch, and at the end of a shift if necessary and funding is available.
