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April 3, 2025
What difference does data make?
Today’s plan
Of Exactitude in Science
…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.
—From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda
This is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges (1946).
Of Exactitude in Science
…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.
—From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda
What is this story about? And can you find a way to relate it to the Nguyen article?
1. This is not a contest
The only way to win is for everyone to win. If you finish early, look around you to see who might need help.
2. You are not bad at technology.
That doesn't even make sense, because technology is not any one thing; it's a whole bunch of different skills, and it's really unlikely that you're bad at all of them.
3. Your mistake is almost invariably very minor.
I have seen people give up in frustration because they can’t remember where they saved their file. THIS IS FIXABLE. It does not mean you are a hopeless case!
4. No one is an expert at everything.
You just can’t be on the cutting edge of text analysis, network analysis, GIS, Python, data visualization, etc., etc. Our goal here is to be good generalists!
5. We do not sink or swim in my class.
Everyone swims or no one swims!
Technology ground rules