I’ve taken a bit of a holiday hiatus from writing about research. So far, I’ve written about repeatability, openness, goals, and searching the literature. Another important part of research is the logical path that connects the evidence signposts together and leads to the conclusion. Part of the research process is to pave that path and […]
Another facet of research is that it starts with a goal. The goal may be fairly general. For example it might be to gather information about a certain surname in a certain area and during a certain time period. Often, though, the goal relates to a hypothesis. Goals and Hypotheses In most research a hypothesis
Literati, (plural noun) – well-educated people who are interested in literature. One of the most important things about open research is that it makes it possible not just to check research but to avoid repeating it unknowingly. In science, no one wants to turn in a grant proposal for an experiment only to be informed
Genealogy Literati Read More »
This week, I need to start where I left off last week, with reproducibility. This week comes a facet to research that overlaps greatly with reproducibility—openness. If reproducibility is central to true research, there must be some way to see inside what someone else has done. It must be possible to understand not just the
Holding the Door Open Read More »
What is “research”? It seems like a simple question but it isn’t. What does research look like? What properties should it have? Research takes many forms, has many entries in the dictionary and can mean slightly different things in different fields. It can involve experiment, observation, testing, fact finding and theory development. In my old
Research, Rinse, Repeat Read More »
By all accounts, Kurt was a strange man, insane eventually. He was paranoid and his life came to an end when he starved himself, fearing that he would be poisoned. Kurt was also brilliant. Not many people took their evening stroll from work at The Institute of Advanced Study with Albert Einstein. Kurt was a
Down the Rabbit Hole Read More »
Our ancestors are more than people. They are slices of times and places that we would know little or nothing about without them and we shouldn’t remain ignorant of those times and places despite them. They are our tour guides. We receive private showings of times and places that most people only vaguely realize exist.
Docents for Descendants Read More »
When you are working on a tricky problem, some reticent relation for example, does it matter what information you find first? At first thought, it should not. Data is data and it ought not to matter what was the first bit gathered and what was the last bit. In the end there is a data
First Come, First Swerved Read More »