Having fun with telephone representatives

Once in a while, I look in on the site Jesus’ General which is a parody website that is hard to describe but is often hilarious. It was the most recent winner of the Koufax Award for Most Humorous Blog.

Recently, the General posted an item about a telephone conversation that someone named Eugene Mirman had with a representative who was trying to get him to switch to her Christian long-distance phone company. As part of her sales pitch to Mirman, the phone rep first made sure that Mirman was opposed to same-sex marriages and then proceeded to allege that rival phone companies AT&T, MCI, and Verizon were all involved in promoting hard-core pornography, child pornography, and homosexuality, thus making them unworthy of God-fearing people.
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The reading level of this blog

I came across an interesting website recently. You type in the URL of any site and it comes back immediately with various measures of the site’s readability, including the years of education necessary to understand it, its clarity, and so forth. It also provides comparisons on these indices with various standard media such as newspapers and magazines.

So naturally the first thing that I did was put in this blog’s URL to see how I shaped up. Here is what I got:

Readability Results for http://blog.case.edu/mxs24
Average words per sentence 16.15
Words with 1 Syllable 3,230
Words with 2 Syllables 1,010
Words with 3 Syllables 561
Words with 4 or more Syllables 415
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 18.71%
Average Syllables per Word 1.65

That much was pretty straightforward. The other three numbers were more mysterious:
Gunning Fog Index 13.94
Flesch Reading Ease 51.07
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 10.15

The site helpfully explains that the Fog Index “is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.” Looking at the algorithm, it seems to depend entirely on the number of words per sentence and the percentage of words that have three or more syllables.

So it takes about 14 years of education (or up to college sophomore level) for someone to understand the content of my website. So clearly I am not going to get huge market share with my blog.

For comparison, some Fog Index Scores are given for other publications:

6 TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8 Reader’s Digest
8 – 10 Most popular novels
10 Time, Newsweek
11 Wall Street Journal
14 The Times, The Guardian
15 – 20 Academic papers
Over 20 Only government sites can get away with this, because you can’t ignore them.
Over 30 The government is covering something up

Since my Fog Index score is close to 15, it seems like it is hard for me to shake the habits of writing in the style of academic papers even in the more casual setting of a blog.

The Flesch Reading Ease number “rates the text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70.” So I flunk this score pretty badly, it looks like. This algorithm, seems to depend entirely on the number of words per sentence and the average number of syllables per word.

The Flesch-Kincaid grade level, like the Gunning-Fog index, “is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. Negative results are reported as zero, and numbers over twelve are reported as twelve.” This seems like the same measure as the Fog Index, but uses average number of syllables per word instead on percentage of words with three syllables or more.

What is one to make of things like this? I find them fun even if I don’t take them too seriously. For one thing, you have to be skeptical of these instant computer-generated analyses of such complex things as writing. While these programs are great at doing numbers, one has to be wary of claims that they can accurately measure things like clarity and reading grade level. They all assume that the number of polysyllabic words and the length of sentences are the only factors, and that the nature of the content is immaterial.

This explains the results for the Bible, which had initially puzzled me. It is ranked together with TV Guide, although surely it is a more difficult book to understand. But it does use short words and sentences. This kind of algorithm also also might explain why the Wall Street Journal, which one might think is less readable than the New York Times, scores at three grades below it.

Suppose I want to become more easily readable. Should I use more words of one syllable? Or shorter sentences? Or both? Or is it the topics that cause the problem? When you write about academic topics, polysyllabic words (two already in this sentence!) creep in without any effort. Can I write about the Copernican Revolution (two more!) and avoid words like heliocentric (another one!)

To become more readable must I switch my focus from history and philosophy of science to Britney Spears? There are some prices that are too high to pay even for increased ease of readability…

The role of Protestant opposition to Copernicus

For many years after the publication of Copernicus’ book De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium in 1543, his ideas remained within the mathematical astronomy community. The more popular books on astronomy and cosmology either were unaware of his work or chose to ignore them. But there were a few non-astronomers such as poets who were aware of his work and they ridiculed it for advocating a moving Earth, not because of any ideas of heresy. It was though the poets and other popularizing writers of that time that Copernicus’ ideas became more widely known.
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The myth concerning circular orbits

In this posting we will examine the myth that the Copernican revolution was hampered by its insistence that the orbits be circles.

To understand the reasons behind this we need to look at the work of an influential, but often unrecognized, player in the Copernican revolution, the astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). He is considered the greatest naked-eye astronomer. He lived just before the invention of telescopes and the accuracy, scope, and reliability of his observations had enormous impact on the field.

It is interesting that Brahe, like most astronomers at that time, rejected Copernicus’ ideas of a moving Earth. He could not accept the arguments for the Earth’s motion, seeing that as creating more problems than solving them. In fact, he developed his own system (called the Tychonic system) that was mathematically equivalent to the Copernican system, but had the Earth as a stationary center. (p. 202. Most of the material in this post is from Thomas Kuhn’s book The Copernican Revolution and page numbers are from that book.)
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Copernicus’ ideas gain support from a few astronomers

As astronomical observations became more comprehensive, and as sea-faring became more widespread, the need for better star-charts in order to have more accurate time-keeping and navigation became imperative. In order to meet this demand for increased accuracy, the method of epicycles outlined by Ptolemy became more and more complicated, and was extended in different ways by different mathematical astronomers until it became hard to say what the Ptolemaic system was. Instead there were a whole set of different calculations all based on the Ptolemaic system, all getting increasingly complicated. And none of them quite agreed with the full range of good naked-eye observations. (p. 139. Most of the material in this post is from Thomas Kuhn’s book The Copernican Revolution and page numbers are from that book.) [Read more…]

Copernicus and the laws of physics

In a previous post, we saw that the popular notion that the Copernican model of the universe was opposed because it implied a demotion for human beings is not supported by close examination of the views of the people actually living in those times. It is, instead, a revisionist version of events that gained ascendancy around 1700 or so.

In today’s post we will examine the myth that the immediate opposition to Copernicus was raised by religious people. The fact that the Copernican model was not perceived contemporaneously as a demotion already weakens the case for that story but there’s more.
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Was the Copernican model a demotion for human beings?

In this post, we will look at one particular myth surrounding the Copernican story, the one that says that Copernican ideas were opposed because they implied a demotion for human beings.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) published De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, his epic work describing a heliocentric system, in 1543 the year of his death. Until then, Ptolemy’s geocentric model described in his Almagest had been the one used for studying planetary motions. In this model, the Earth was at the center of the universe and every celestial body orbited about the center. The Almagest was the “first systematic mathematical treatise to give a complete, detailed, and quantitative account of all the celestial motions.” (Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, p. 72) This work was so good and its methods so powerful, that it provided the framework for astronomical calculations for nearly 1500 years. It was the framework that guided Copernicus’ own work.
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Looking closely at scientific history

Since I started looking more closely into the history of science, there are two things that I have learned that I have recast into principles.

The first is that the more closely we examine important historical events in science, the less resemblance they bear to the popular condensed capsule versions that are learned in school or college or portrayed in the popular media. The earlier posting about Columbus and the flat Earth is a case in point.

The second principle is that while science textbooks are usually good for teaching the current principles of science, they tend to be bad for teaching anything about the history of science or the nature of science. In those cases, what they usually describe is better described as folklore rather than history.

Take for example one of the most famous of all scientific revolutions, the one associated with Copernicus. The popular version of this story goes as follows:

The ancient Greeks, while pretty good at mapping the stars and motion of planets, tended to create models of the universe that were strongly influenced by religious, philosophical, and aesthetic considerations, rather than on observation and experiment. Hence they came up with the idea that the Earth was the stationary center of the universe (which pleased those religious people who wanted to give pride of place to the home of God’s greatest creation – human beings) and that the stars and planets were embedded on the surface of a sphere that rotated around the Earth in circles, which pleased those philosophers with highly refined sensibilities who felt that since the circle and sphere were the most perfect geometric shapes, they had to play a central role in the cosmos.
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The myth about Columbus and the shape of the Earth

In his April 3, 2005 New York Times column called It’s a Flat World, After All, Thomas Friedman begins:

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met “Indians” and came home and reported to his king and queen: “The world is round.”

This is just a throwaway anecdote, to set the frame for another of Friedman’s typical banal outpourings of conventional wisdom. (Sorry to offend the many Friedman fans that are out there but I have never understood his appeal. Not only does he not seem to have any original insights but he also comes across as patronizing and condescending, especially towards the people of other countries.)
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Should college presidents take a stand on evolution?

In response to a previous post, Becky posted an interesting comment that I responded to briefly but which requires a more extended reply. (One of the unexpected pleasures of starting this blog is that it has put me in touch again with former students like Becky who was in my course about eight years ago and is now doing a PhD in Astronomy. Her own very lively blog is well worth a visit.)

Becky pointed me to an interesting article that was posted on the blog of the editors of Scientific American, entitled Cowardice, Creationism and Science Education: An Open Letter to the Universities.

At a dinner with the presidents of about a dozen private and state universities, John Rennie (one of the editors of Scientific American) and Steve Jaschik (editor of Inside Higher Education) asked the assembled presidents the following:

Suppose we have a petition here that says, “As university presidents, we affirm that evolution by means of natural selection is a demonstrated fact of science. We also assert that any failure to teach evolution, or to teach ‘intellectual design’ as an alternative theory, harms students’ educational standing.� Who here would not sign, and why?

Rennie continues: “Disappointingly, not one of the presidents in attendance was willing to go on the record as supporting such a petition. When they could finally be drawn out on why, their answers were equally unsatisfying.”

He concludes: “Let’s not tiptoe around the truth. University presidents are afraid to speak out in favor of evolution because they know that they will antagonize anti-evolution Christians.”

I think he is being too harsh. It may well be that the presidents were trying to duck the issue, knowing full well that they have to deal with a whole slew of constituencies ranging from current students and faculty, alumni, donors, legislators, etc. and any stand that they take on such an issue would be bound to cause them some grief.

But I think that there also exists a principled reason for them not taking a stand on issues such as evolution, and I was surprised that none of the college presidents present had made it.

I do not think it is the role of college presidents to take stands on this kind of specific issue. College presidents should not have to take positions on the pressing issues of the day, however clear cut they might seem to us. If they take a stand on the issue of evolution, then they would be expected to take stands on a whole range of other political and social issues and the process would never end. They would be just churning out press releases all day.

Where they should take stands is in support of the basic mission of the university, which is to provide a place for scholars and students to seek, create and disseminate knowledge, in an atmosphere of collegiality, and free from coercion or political pressure. Their goal should be to protect the right of their students and faculty to pursue knowledge in as unfettered an atmosphere as is possible, so that the university’s mission can be realized.

Thus they can, and should, be expected to take a stand on those issues that directly affect the health of universities. So for example, taking a stand on Ohio’s Senate Bill 24 is fine. Taking a stand on affirmative action in admissions is also fine. Taking a stand on issues of discrimination and harassment in universities is fine. All these issues go to the core of what universities stand for. There may be tactical reasons for not always staking out a public position on some of these, but it would be quite appropriate to do so.

But I cannot see anything special about the evolution/creationist split that requires a college president to articulate a position. While I find it bizarre that 45% of Americans can still, in this day and age (according to a Gallup poll in November 2004), believe that “God created man in present form within the last 10,000 years,” I don’t see why that should trigger a specific comment from college presidents, any more than the equally disturbing fact that 44% believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis. (Here’s a question for a sociological study: Are the two groups of people actually one and the same?)

Taking a stand on specific issues that affect particular scientific or other academic struggles should be left to individual faculty members and students or their representative bodies. What college presidents should do is protect those faculty and students who do take stands on evolution or other similar issues (whichever side they support) from retribution from politicians and interest groups who try to limit the exercise of free inquiry or try to prevent the members of academic from making scholarly judgments.

So I think we should give college presidents a break on this one.