A shape is a graphical representation of an object’s form or its external boundary, outline, or external surface. — Wikipedia, retrieved May 13, 2026 Most of the time, we grow up with an understanding of “shape” without needing to have it articulated. For some of us, or our children or grandchildren, that sense is reinforcedContinue reading “Stories and Shapes: An Interlude”
Category Archives: Narrative
The Sorcerer’s App
On January 28th, Nature published a brief news story by science writer and editor Sara Phillips about the latest threat from AI to online veracity, in this case, the virtual undetectability of chatbots responding to social science surveys. The centerpiece of the story was a peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy ofContinue reading “The Sorcerer’s App”
Narrative Landscapes, Part I:
The emperor has no clothes that fit
The term “landscape” has something powerfully seductive about it. The imagery it evokes is so appealing, that further thought can be completely suspended. — Jones (1995) Seductive indeed: use story-related data on a contour plot to identify clusters or loci of desirable and undesirable responses; look at plausible pathways across the “topography” between these loci;Continue reading “Narrative Landscapes, Part I:
The emperor has no clothes that fit”
Statistics in the Triad, Part VI: The Story as Unit of Observation
If you had asked me a year ago to identify the primary unit of observation in a SenseMaker project, I would have said, without much hesitation, it’s the story, of course. When I started writing Part IV in this series on Confidence Regions, however, I had to revisit that question. I knew what was typicallyContinue reading “Statistics in the Triad, Part VI: The Story as Unit of Observation”
Tom Brady and the Intrinsic Narrative
A few Sunday evenings ago, I watched Super Bowl LI, the climactic game of the 2016-17 season of the National Football League. With the loss and exit by the Dallas Cowboys earlier in the playoffs, I had no emotional stake in the outcome of the game, but at least some of the TV commercials might beContinue reading “Tom Brady and the Intrinsic Narrative”