Posted by Kenneth Sloan on July 16, 2001 at 14:54:35:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yet another change to The Tuba Sound posted by Rick Denney on July 16, 2001 at 09:29:04:
I agree completely that "you must be careful what you optimize". But...
There is a chicken/egg question here. I have spent a considerable part of my professional life working on bringing quantitative methods into a field that has a long tradition of "we know it when we see it".
There are always two major camps - the nerds and the touchy-feely folk. The nerds don't understand anything unless there is a number attached to it. The touchy-feely folk couldn't make change at McDonald's, but they can work magic. Both camps are well represented here.
There are charlatans in both camps.
But...
In my view, any progress towards quantification is a good thing. It's hard. There are a million variables - each one of which can totally destroy the meaning of the results. The really talented members of the "touchy-feely crowd" are appreciative - if and when the numbers help explain the WHY and HOW of things that they already know, but don't know how to explain.
Here's the chicken/egg bit - the nerds want to believe that the numbers will help us design the perfect tuba. And they are right. But, as Rick points out, in the beginning we only have numbers which describe part of the story. The FIRST job for the nerds is to capture lots of numbers, and then use those numbers to explain WHY certain horns are valued. The first lesson for the nerds is that the books lie. Quite often, people don't know why they like certain instruments - even when they can give a checklist of things that they think about. Terms such as "even intonation", "projection", "color" are poor substitutes for "playing and listening". The nerds need to understand that they have a long way to go.
On the other hand, the "touchy-feely crowd" needs to understand that quantification will eventually be very useful. They give us another way of listening, another sense, another instrument to probe the unknown.
So, for now (and for a long time to come) "optimize with caution".