David J. Hand, the author of the book The Improbability Principle has a list of items that go into his principle- The Law of Inevitability The Law of Truly Large Numbers The Law of Selection The Law of the Probability Lever The Law of Near Enough In the book he describes events that seem like […]
The other day I went to the library to pick up a book I had on hold. I found the book and a magazine on the shelf waiting for me. I checked them out and was casually flipping through the magazine while I waited for my daughter’s choir practice to wrap up. In the back
Last week after a presentation one of the audience members came up to the front to say hello. She said that after hearing my introduction she had to tell me that she had been a physicist in the 1950s and that she understood the connection between being a physicist and being a genealogist. She added
Sources give us information. That information is the same no matter who looks at it. A researcher might miss something but that missed information is there whether we see it or not. Other times information only becomes meaningful when placed in context. The source has the information but the knowledge needed to interpret it needs
Whither the Source? Read More »
“Hmm…I wonder if this the right family. It could be. Better check these new names and see if they clarify things…I’ll start with Reginald, that’s an unusual name.” “Oh, what’s this? Ronald…Could that be Reginald? Better check that!” “Wait, which window did I have that first document in? Ok, found it.” “Here is a Donald
I don’t remember when I first read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Whenever it was, I have read it many times since. I won’t go into much of it here, it would be well off topic. Suffice it to say that it deals with a vast sweep of the future and the decline of a great
Fingered by the Index Read More »
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. —Henry David Thoreau Reading old genealogical works can be an almost mystical experience. Not mystical with a capital “M” as in a
Hinting at the Facts Read More »
The famous biologist Edward O. Wilson has written that, “The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper.” That is research in a nutshell. Poetry A poet asks the big questions and looks for the big patterns. What if this isn’t him in these records? What if they married in America not
Poetry + Accounting = ? Read More »
Words. They are the smallest unit of meaning. The documents we study, the stories we are told are built up of those units. Little bits of meaning are added to each other until some information is conveyed. To understand that information we need to understand the basic ingredients. Do we always know what those ingredients
Checking sources can be an oddly enjoyable pastime. At least I think so. That is, I both enjoy it and admit that it might be somewhat odd to enjoy it. I think what lies behind a statement is often even more fascinating than the statement itself. Every conclusion has a story behind it, a sort
Dance of the Sources Read More »