Software philosophy [message #66371] |
Fri, 15 May 2009 12:41  |
Kenneth P. Bowman
Messages: 585 Registered: May 2000
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Senior Member |
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Got a marketing blurb from Maplesoft for Maple13/MapleSim2 that
included the following:
> Now, here's the really cool thing � MapleSim takes your data and,
> using the Maple symbolic math engine, derives the model's equations
> automatically.
>
> Even a cursory reading of the examples in the Getting Started Guide
> (in Maple) will demonstrate the lengths that the developers have gone
> through to assist the novice with every imaginable task.
Somehow I don't think this is really where we all want to
go. It sounds to me like modeling without understanding.
Cheers, Ken
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Re: Software philosophy [message #66509 is a reply to message #66371] |
Mon, 18 May 2009 02:52  |
Maarten[1]
Messages: 176 Registered: November 2005
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Senior Member |
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On May 15, 9:41 pm, "Kenneth P. Bowman" <k-bow...@null.edu> wrote:
> Got a marketing blurb from Maplesoft for Maple13/MapleSim2 that
> included the following:
>
>> Now, here's the really cool thing ‹ MapleSim takes your data and,
>> using the Maple symbolic math engine, derives the model's equations
>> automatically.
>
> Somehow I don't think this is really where we all want to
> go. It sounds to me like modeling without understanding.
From a blog post David recently linked to, I quote the following:
John von Neumann: “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and
with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. ”
I think this applies here. Fitting everything including the kitchen
sink is not where I want to go (unless I'm building a house).
That said, do they give examples of a result of this software using
(noisy) input data? I do have some data where the model is
straightforward (exponential decay), but depends on the interpretation
of the noise signal - Poison noise (photon shot noise) + Gaussian
contribution (electronics). I'd be interesting if they could find
that. I bet they find the exponential, but miss the noise contribution
in the quantitative analysis.
Of course, the Open Mind blog post ( http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/dangerous-curves/
) contains data that should not be fitted. I wonder what they do
there. It will be a while before I'll do my climate analysis with
this.
Maarten
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