Question place 2015

Time to hang out the shingle again for questions.  What would you like to know about?

In the mean time -- See Dr. Kate Marvel's distressingly accurate description of the peer review process.  Fortunately it isn't always like that.  Unfortunately, it sometimes is, or at least is close.  While you're at it, add her to your regular reading.  See her also at @DrKateMarvel on twitter.

Also, If you need your fellow scientists to be dry & stern & aloof in order to take their work seriously, you are a terrible scientist. @AstroKatie  Scientists are usually passionate about their science.  How that gets expressed, varies.  Some like the dry+stern+aloof approach.  Some like the yippee! approach.  As she also said, versus the dull and inaccurate 'scientists mystified by X' headlines: All headlines about unexplained phenomena should read "Scientists Super Excited to Find New Juicy Juicy Mystery to Gleefully Obsess Over"

Question place!

Been a while since I hung out the shingle for questions.  Have at it.

Also, a couple astronomical things have come up in my 3d life, so remember that's an area to think/ask about too.

How to ask good questions

"Never ask a question you don't want the answer to." is one of my mother's better pieces of advice.  Not always one of the easiest to follow.  It comes to mind because I've been thinking off and on about Carl Zimmer's article An open letter to science students and science teachers.  See the article for some examples of how not to ask questions, and the comments for how common it is to receive bad questions.  Here, I'll take up the matter of how to ask good questions, at least as far as I've figured this out myself.

One step is to follow my mother's advice -- if you don't want the answer, don't ask the question.  Another flavor of this mistake is to ask a question when you only want a particular answer -- say to ask whether something is true, and then being angry when the answer comes back the 'wrong' way.  Not common in Zimmer's illustrations, but extremely common on blogs.

Since science is about learning more about how the universe works, a good question is one that helps you do that.  "What about frogs?", for instance, is not a good question.  Frogs are part of the universe, so learning more about frogs is a good thing.  But that question doesn't take you anywhere.  What about them?  Are you interested in them as food?  What they eat?  Where they live?  Whether they're poisonous?  How to tell whether they're poisonous?

Those alternate questions of mine are narrower, but that's the point.  The narrower focus lets the person you're answering know whether they've answered you -- which is a good thing.  After the one question, you're ready to ask another and they're ready to answer it.

A second aspect which is violated often in the examples at Zimmer's is a failure to 'do your homework'.  You don't have to know everything, getting towards that point is why you're asking questions.  Where people go wrong is, for instance, to not read the article they say they're asking about.  If the title is "How we know the moon is not made of green cheese", the question "Why do you think the moon is made of green cheese?" is a bad one.

Better is to ask why the moon looks like it's made of green cheese.  The article answers how we know it isn't, but it didn't answer this question.  (There is a greenish cast to the moon, at least to my eyes at certain times of the month.)

Even better is to follow up something that interested you from the article, like when the author mentions that the moon is made of a very dark rock (it is -- anorthosite, which is like what Hawaii and Iceland are made of).  If the moon is made of a dark rock, why is a full moon so bright?

There are two good aspects to this question.  First, it shows that you read deeper than just the title of the article.  Second, it shows that you are trying to fit this piece of knowledge in with other things you know.  Since scientists are constantly doing this themselves, they're happy to see you doing it too.

My son's 5th grade science class did a related good thing.  Namely, after I had chatted about the kind of science I studied and asked the class for questions, first, they had questions, which was good.  And second, they followed up each others' questions.  It showed they were listening (always good) and the very good thing that they were bringing the earlier answers in to their minds and this was leading them to more questions.

It isn't for nothing that a common comment about a scientific result is that it raises more questions than it answers.  Once you've gotten the hang of asking good questions, each answer breeds more questions.

Another thing I've seen in my visits to classes, including or especially middle school (grades 4-6, ages 9-12) is that if students do follow up questions, it's often only four or so questions before they get to something I can't answer, in fact that I know the answer is not currently known.  Maybe they're the ones who will finally learn the answer.  And, of course, open up a raft of new questions.

My question place posts are a place to practice.

Question place

Have at it -- questions welcome.  Answers probably of higher quality (from me, at least) if they're about ice, sea surface temperature, and related parts of the climate, or about running. 

Also suggestions welcome.

Question Place

Ok, looks like life is moving in a more blog-friendly way.  So I'll hang out the shingle again for your questions, suggestions, comments.

In the mean time, I'll note a few additions and losses.  Among the losses is that the blogger widget for showing the 10 most recent comments is broken.  You can still subscribe to the comments.  My notes about sites which seem to be inactive, but which have material you can still read and is worth reading, are now a 'page' -- one of the tabs near the top of the page, so a loss and an addition. 

Also added to the tabs near the top are "The Simplest Climate Model", and "What is Climate?", which collect in one place, finally, the several posts I've made on each topic.  There'll be more.

Summer Questions

Been a while since I hung out the shingle -- so here's a place for your questions/comments/suggestions that don't fit with any particular post.

On a different matter, I've noticed that my older posts don't get comments.  This strikes me as odd because I don't close comments.  And recent comments are always shown at the bottom of the page, along with a subscription to comments rss feed on the right hand side.  If they weren't being read, no surprise that there are no comments.  But some posts have had most of their reads months and even years after the original appearance.  Any ideas?

The Return of Questions

It's been a long while, but at last here's a question place post for you all to ask about what's on your mind.  Particularly if what's on your mind has something to do with thinks I know about :-)

Question Place

I'm now back from my hiatus from the net, and will be putting up pictures and science comments on them over the next few days/weeks.

But first, here's a place and chance to ask questions and make suggestions.  I've been pretty thoroughly off-net since the 8th, so please be sure to provide links if you're asking about recent events.  (See the link policy; links to science content are good things whether I've been off-net or not.)

Question Place

Finally back and in some shape to answer questions and perhaps even do something useful with suggestions, so bring 'em on and let's have some fun!

Science Cafe

This Thursday (September 30th) I'll be talking about ice, and, better, yet, answering questions about ice at the Annapolis Cafe Scientifique.  The time will be 6 PM instead of the usual 6:30.  Same location as usual -- Cafe 49 West.  Local folks are invited, and non-local are welcome to pose questions here.

Question place

Time to hang out the shingle for questions.  As always, response time will be variable, including that I may not be able to answer.  If so, maybe a reader can.  And maybe we can have some discussion about the question and how we might go about finding the answer.

Dare to ask a question!

I sometimes browse the referrals to my site, and was surprised to see someone commenting that they 'dare not' post here.  Most peculiar.  Unless the author of that comment is incapable of writing without profanity, or can't staying on topic (and his comment there showed no such signs), they certainly may 'dare' to post here.  At least as far as I'm concerned.  If there are employer-based reasons, well, that's out of my hands.

It's a while since I've put up a 'question place' note, so here's one for current questions.  Be daring, ask a question!

New Year, New Question Place

Time for a new place for people to leave their questions.  I don't forget about the older questions, don't worry about that.  Some just take some time to answer -- sometimes I have to go learn something myself.  I like doing so, but it takes time.  Sometimes, fortunately, some readers already know an answer, so you don't have to wait for me.  Of course, other times, I do know the answer and can let you know more quickly.

This is also a place for suggestions of topics to cover.  Those, too, may take a while.  I really do, for instance, want to get hold of the biofilm article that Hank mentioned in the last question place.  Not the easiest thing for me to get.  But it should happen.

Question Place

About time again for one of these. Questions, suggestions, ideas, and so forth.

Question place

Been a while since I put up a note for you to ask questions/make comments/suggest topics/ etc.. So, here goes. Have at it.

Semi-open thread 1

This is the first semi-open thread for the blog, as opposed to the many question place threads. Please first read on commenting before putting up your comment. Given other comments I've been receiving lately, I'll also suggest reading:

Cherry Picking
Why you need 20-30 years to decide climate trends

Questions are, of course, welcome here as well!

What is a good question?

I've often heard the comment that much of science is asking good questions. That's true. I also heard often in school that there are no bad questions, which is reasonably correct also. But there can be quite a distance between not bad and good. I can't, however, remember anybody describing how to go about asking better questions. There are probably many different ways of improving, so, as usual, I invite comments.

An important part of a good question is, it will be clear that it has been answered. Start with the not-bad question "What's up with climate?" Maybe you answer talking about sea ice and polar bears. But I'm unsatisfied because what I wanted to hear about was global temperatures. So I ask the improved question "What's up with global temperatures?", and you answer talking about how the stratospheric temperatures have dropped and surface temperatures have risen lately. But I'm still unsatisfied, because I don't care about the stratosphere, and the surface temperatures I care about are the ocean's. So now I ask "What's up with ocean surface temperatures?", and you say 'not much', or, maybe, 'they've risen'. Again, I don't have an answer. You're doing your best, and being honest, but the questions just aren't strong enough.

A strong question is "How much has global mean sea surface temperature changed over the past 150 years, and what are the uncertainties in that number?" This, neither you, nor I, nor any random spectator will have any difficulty telling whether I've gotten an answer to my question. It'll be something like "risen by 0.5 C and 0.1 C standard error in that estimate". Whether 0.5 and 0.1 are correct, I don't know offhand. But, at this point, the question has an answer which is fill in the blank. We can then hit the literature (say IPCC Ch. 3 and the citations in that chapter) looking for it. If the question didn't have an answer waiting for us in the literature, we also know how to start doing our research -- look for data sources about ocean surface temperature, that are distributed over the globe, and which go back 150 years (or more, of course).

A different strong question is "Why is the sky blue?" No reason that young kids can't be asking strong questions. An answer to this question must adress why the sky is blue, as opposed to green. And a strong answer will tell you how blue it will be under different conditions. If, for instance, you have a high humidity and many aerosols, the sky tends towards white -- under the action of the same process which tells us that the sky (away from the sun) is very blue when the air is clean and dry. (Rayleigh scattering).

Questions that start "What about ...", "How about ...", "What's up with ..." are almost never strong questions. Strong questions usually start "How much ...", "How fast ...", "How big ...", or say "How well do we know ...".

If we really don't know much about an area, which is the case for us for most areas of human knowledge, it can be hard to ask strong questions. So we start with the not-bad questions aimed at learning more about the area, and keep asking them until we can ask strong questions. Hence my 'question place'.

Question place 5

Time to put out another shingle for questions. Note that this includes suggestions of papers I might read or comment on (like Steve's), questions for projects you have in mind (such as Bart's recent one), or whatever else comes to mind. Usual comment rules apply of course.

aside: I really will be getting to a summary of the graphing software you all suggested some time back. Been doing other things, including some home improvement. Fortunately, that project is finishing up.

Back to the main: A different part is, if you have what you think are 'stupid' questions, ask anyhow. You can do it anonymously (I permit anonymous comments). If the question is one to help improve your understanding science, or some particular part of science, it's a good one. Have at it. As I'm trying to reach to middle-school students, I realize this includes a pretty broad range of question.

Suggestions

Time for a converse to the usual question place note -- here's a place to contribute suggestions for the blog. Topics to cover, display methods, ... whatever would make for a more interesting and useful blog. I'll particularly address this to the science teachers, as I would like to be helping you and your students learn about science in general, and my science(s) in particular. But all constructive ideas are welcome.

Questions for a new year

As always, here's a place to put your questions, particularly about science.

As it's a new year, and resolutions may be present, questions about getting started exercising (especially for running, but other sports also welcome), or good things to read are also welcome.