Science – Page 9 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Translational Research and Clinical Practice: Basic Tools for Medical Decision Making and Self-Learning

By Scott J. Pearson | July 19, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Stephen C. Aronoff.(c) 2011. This book was a review – and to some degree, an extension – of medical school for me. I always enjoyed reviewing the medical literature. In fact, it was my favorite part of my medical training and the part I miss the most. I love translating research into clinical advice. Unfortunately, fortune had it that the clinic was not to be my domain, so I sit in the research realm…

Visualization

Data Points: Visualization That Means Something

By Scott J. Pearson | July 15, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Nathan Yau.(c) 2013 Data Points reads like a friendly textbook engaged with visualization. It is less concerned with tips and tricks, and more concerned with understanding. For instance, on the neverending debate on pie charts, Yau pleads neutrality. He sees that pie charts havetheir place, albeit a limited one, in the visualization domain. As such, he promotes freedom and the ability to choose above all. There are lots of data that need appropriate visualization in…

Resources to Explore

By Scott J. Pearson | July 14, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

Essential Biostatistics: A Nonmathematical Approach by Harvey MotulskyFundamentals of Biostatistics by Bernard RosnerR for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data by Hadley Wickham and Garrett GrolemundThe Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design by Norman MatloffFramingham Heart StudyA History of Public Health by George Rosen and Elizabeth FeePublic Health: A Very Short Introduction by Virginia BerridgeThe History of Global Health: Intervention into the Lives of Other Peoples by Randall M. Packard

Visualization

Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

By Scott J. Pearson | July 11, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic(c) 2015 Back in my first programming job after college, I was dabbling in graphics for some bit of computer code that analyzed genetic data. I read some works by Edward Tufte, an expert from Yale who made academic munch-meat of visualization data for his career. The verbiage was lofty; the images were inspiring; and I could not figure out how to translate the lofty rhetoric and aesthetics into meaningful graphics and…

Biography-Memoir Science

Isaac Newton

By Scott J. Pearson | June 16, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by James GleickCopyright 2003 Sir Isaac Newton ranks among history’s greatest geniuses. For inventing modern physics. For overturning Aristotle’s hegemony upon thought. For co-inventing calculus (as an introduction to physics). For being more into theology and alchemy than physics. His treasure-trove of personal writings – kept hidden until near the middle of the twentieth century – show this man to be, like Luther before him, the last of the great medievalists who birthed the movement…

Biography-Memoir Science

Galileo

By Scott J. Pearson | June 12, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Bertolt BrechtCopyright 1966 This book, as the introduction delineates, was originally written in Fascist Germany whose attitude towards science and knowledge in general paralleled the ignorance of the Papacy in Galileo’s era. Then in a post-atomic-bomb world with two superpowers on the brink, Brecht adapted this play into a new set of concerns about the “fruit” of knowledge. As such, in our era of Trumpian ignorance and North Korean nuclear ambition (two parties who…

Books Science Visualization

Resources to Explore

By Scott J. Pearson | June 11, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

Science

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

By Scott J. Pearson | June 7, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Thomas S. KuhnThird EditionCopyright 1962, 1970, 1996. This is a book that I’ve wanted to read ever since college. I was reading it when I started medical school, but studies soon overtook me. It’s a history of science. Rather, it’s a philosophical theory on how science progresses through history. From Newton and chemistry to Darwin and quantum mechanics, it tells the story of how science moves forward. This progress is, as Kuhn tells it,…