Sweeter Smelling Roses Through Renaming

Last night I realized the irony of my previous post and my research project.

In art, double meanings and uncertainty is part of interpretation, adding to the richness of an experience. But statisticians dread this. We create multivariate models and look at the coeffients. How much, and in what direction does a change in X lead to a change in Y. Single. Meaning. Clarity.

Recently I read Freakonomics. One of the things that really bugged me, especially for such an "outside the box" book, was the claim that "economics was how the world is, not how it ought to be". On face, it's a dichotomy of science vs. art. But I argue that economics, and science for that matter, is only the world as it is measured.

I'm scrapping a long winded explaination about measurement, because Seth Godin simplifies the issue further: How are things named? His case in point: Global Warming. Again the question: What is the meaning & what is the experience? In this case, the meaning and experience are contradictory. And yet it become terminology, however illconcieved. Some things are not roses.