Advice To A Young Variable

Advice To A Young Variable

You have just been created and you are just beginning to generate little data of your own. These data and many more will be created as you appear in the format that permits you to propagate in a healthy and hopefully reliable and valid way. This is a wonderful time in a new variable’s life and you should relish this time. But, there is more potential for success than you could ever dream of and it can be yours in the future, if, of course, you follow my advice and proceed carefully. You may think it can’t get any better than this, but that is not true. It is possible to become a great source of data, perhaps you could even be known as a latent variable or maybe you could even be referred to as a construct. It is also possible to remain one of the lesser variables, a mere manifest variable that appears to be solitary and usually works alone and stands alone in summary tables. This is an honorable existence but it is not being all you can be.

If you just do your job in an open and honest manner you are destined to remain a manifest variable your whole life. You can be common, hard working, sometimes even mildly interesting and intriguing and maybe a little challenging, but never among the great variables in the pantheon of variables that truly create the world of education and psychology. You must learn to do some very difficult tricks if you want to move up the status hierarchy of variables.

First, you need to seem to be related to others in your field, and I do not mean just where you came from. Almost no one cares who invented you although occasionally someone might remark on when you came on the scene, but do not waste your time on such genealogical matters. In other words, what I mean is that you should have some moderate correlation with many other variables, and in a pattern that is not easy to decipher but is suggestive of great import. It is best if some of these variables are older, familiar ones and some are newer and just becoming popular. In other words, cultivate a mix of ties to the familiar and ties to the new or less familiar. This will make human researchers think there is something there worth studying because you have an historical familiarity as well as the promise of something new. Feeling this, human researchers will be more likely to use you in their next series of studies. Use is what you live for. That, and the fame of being perceived as critical and necessary in any study.

Second, you must not be too obvious. Become somewhat inscrutable with a hint of potential greatness. For example, if you relate to some other variables in a direct way, mix in a few indirect relationships so that you will not be seen as boring or too readily predictable. Remember that researchers like to feel that you are familiar, but that you are holding something back. That keeps their interest.

Third, make the researchers work for their insight. If a scientist gets the insight too easily, he or she will not see the need to “buy” the variable, if you know what I mean. This means that at a minimum a computer program will be needed to calculate something about you and your place in the panoply of variables.

Remember that your goal is to be latent or even maybe to someday represent the idea of a construct. No one knows what those terms mean, but they are none-the-less very meaningful to researchers and everyone wants to use one in their study. You may become famous as a manifest variable but you will never hold the true respect of the human researchers. For example, if you try to be like “salary” you will be used a lot but not respected, like when someone says “ O.K., let’s throw in a measure of income.” Being an afterthought or even an automatic variable is not a goal worth having. Humans have an intuitive sense of the depth of an idea so that your variable name must suggest a certain panache or a complexity that is intriguing, remote and yet suggests an idea that will be understood with time.

As to the use of a computer, remember that you will be seen as more interesting if you become transformed and the more complex the transformation the better. So for example, you might learn from your middle aged friend, theta, how to become known through solving a complex equation and in that way you will take a big step toward latency or constructness (i.e., the degree to which a variable represents or suggests the existence of a construct). Never forget that a simple transformation or mathematical process such as arcsin or obtaining the expected value is just not going to change you enough to make you appear to possess sufficient depth for star quality. If a researcher has to study the transformation (in other words, it is a complicated transformation) before he or she can even understand you, that is one of the characteristics that will set you apart and make you valuable and perhaps even famous. So rotations are always going to make you seem more interesting than if you result from a simple multiplication by a constant or even multiplication and addition by constants.

Remember the F word and its magical power to demand that you be studied further and that you be taken seriously. Being “factored” is an almost sure ticket to becoming at least latent and maybe even a construct or at least a key element of a construct. Also remember that being confirmed is better than just being explored. So if you and your closest and not so close friends can work as a team you can all gain in the process, although loading on several important factors is sometimes, better than just loading on one factor, especially if the one is not the first to birth. Remember you do NOT want to be part of the scree and also remember to avoid being ignored you need to have relations with as many of your friends as possible, while keeping some individuality for yourself.

Do not misunderstand what I mean by my advice above. Being used is the best thing that can happen to you, but you must also be respected for the power that you hold over the human mind. I am sure you realize that no-one really respects a dummy variable, no how they code it. You want to become a necessary and integral part of any model that human researchers are contemplating. This will keep you really alive and let you live long and prosper. Good luck, my young friend.

Some Observations Related to Fame and Fortune in the Research Profession

The following is a short (perhaps apocryphal) story of Sir Isaac Newton’s neighbor, Fred.

Fred lived on a small farm with several apple trees. The farm was just across a small stream next to another farm that was frequently visited by Isaac Newton (called Izzy, by some). One day Fred was sitting in the orchard and an apple fell upon his head. This he found to be an exciting and marvelous experience and he began to study this phenomenon. He began to record the actions around him and his own reaction to these actions. He wrote a thick description!

In this thick description he recorded many amazing observations regarding the apple trees, the apples, the fertilizer and the movement of the creek and its waters as they occasionally bathed the ground around the trees with enticing ripples of thought provoking emanations. He noticed that some apples were green and some were red and that some were large and that some were small. He noticed that sometimes the apples hit the ground and sometimes they fell upon his body, and sometimes they even fell upon other apples. He noticed that when they fell upon his head, they hurt even more than when they fell upon his arm. This all amazed him and year after year he sat under the apple trees and observed with an openness that greatly impressed his neighbors.

Finally, he had five hundred pages of thick description of the orchard and the apple trees within it and even included information about the leaves and bugs on the ground. While directly relevant to the phenomenon of interest, Fred felt that it added to the triangulation of the events by including these other observations. He published his book under the name “Apple Observation Principals” and it was a great success. Other people read this book and began to praise it. One, named Yogred, even said that it was hard to believe that anyone could ever know any more about the world of apples and their falling than did Fred.

Fred was not proud, nor boastful, although all the praise made him more determined than before to observe apples and he spent even more time doing so. In another 15 years, it came about that he was able to exceed his earlier success by writing a second even thicker description, this one of almost 1000 pages in length. This volume was also praised by many people for its truly beautiful and insightful observations. Some people even described them as having a somewhat romantic, lyric quality.

During this time, Isaac came to visit the neighboring farm and having heard about Fred’s great success, he too went to sit under an apple tree. Being a person who was not always lucky, just after he sat under the tree, an apple fell upon his head, just as one had upon Fred’s head. He jumped up, not even noticing if the apple were red or green, large or small. Later, some of the people who praised Fred’s observations even laughed at his lack of perspicacity. He ran to the house and began to think about that experience and after a few years he wrote a book called Natural Philosophy and Mathematical Principals.

The friends of Fred ignored Isaac’s book. They knew almost intuitively that it was not a good description of the apples upon the trees and their motions as they fell and of the influences of the stream, or the bugs and the grasses. They, and Fred himself, knew from casual glance that they could not read the book but that it was not worth reading, in any case. They continued to observe and to love apples, for they knew that apples were important to mankind and life was good for them, as it should have been. Isaac, too, had some measure of success with his work, although he was never able to compete with Fred as an observer of apples.

The End.


The following are just a few quotes that are purported to be from an independent and anonymous contemporaneous observer of Isaac’s and Fred’s work. Great diversity of opinion exists as to the truth of these comments, but they are much like Zen Koans, perhaps worth contemplating.

“Researchers who do not know what to do focus upon writing thick descriptions.”

“Researchers who have difficulty working with abstractions write grounded theory.”

“If one observes constantly and does not move toward the development of theory, the difficulty is probably not due to their inability to observe but to their inability to think about what they are observing.”

Why do they keep on disagreeing with me?

The question asked in the title has been a concern of mine since at least high school and continues to be an issue that puzzles me, although I am beginning to reach a state of peace on this matter. When I was a high school student I would see things quite clearly and I would explain to the class or to another student how things really were. Often this raised no particular conflict or puzzlement to either of us, but sometimes I would be faced with disagreement or a questioning look. This was puzzling but good, because when I was in high school, I just assumed that the only reason someone would disagree with me was because they were ignorant about the subject at hand. This was no problem, it simply meant that I needed to “educate” the person and I would proceed to do so. Usually this worked and we stopped at some point discussing the matter any further. I interpreted this state of affairs as equivalent to “winning the debate through education.”

When I got to college, I discovered that sometimes the silence of people was not actually an acknowledgment that I had won the debate. For several years I interpreted this to mean that I had to redouble my efforts to share my view of the truth with the person in question. The big difference is that I had matured to the point where I took responsibility for the ignorance of the person with whom I shared my various insights. This was called internal locus of control in the psychology classes I took in college and I was further pleased with my greater insight that the disagreement was not really due solely to the ignorance of the other person but was a shared responsibility. The problem was, I thought, primarily due to the fact that I had not taken adequate responsibility for both our views of the matter. I also realized that the situation was more complex than I first thought. I not only needed to explain the facts but I also needed to explain the reasoning that must be utilized. In other words, I realized then that it was not just a matter of the ignorance of the facts, but it was even more due to the logic (lack there of) that was inhibiting him or her coming to the correct conclusion. I adopted my new found responsibility along with the expanded insight and shared my gifts as freely as possible.

After I got out of college I still found myself in situations where people disagreed with me. This occurred after I had shared my insight about the logical process needed to come to the correct conclusion and after I had fully explained the facts of the matter. They still disagreed. At that time in my life, I developed and adopted another new theory that now changed my perspective on these sorts of discussions. I realized that the people who disagreed with me were simply dumb and it was pointless to continue to try to enable them to see the truth. What else could it be? I shared, I explained, they failed to comprehend, ergo stupid person. Sometimes their limitations were evidenced by their inability to link consecutive ideas so that the result was the conclusion I had come up with. A nice neat logical explanation of the why of our disagreement had been provided and I was quite happy with that explanation, for a while. In fact, my realization made it clear that there was little point in trying to argue their way to agreement, so I became what was thought by others to be tactful and kindly and understanding. In reality, it meant that I gave up on them and no longer cared that they were stupid.

After I got to middle age, I continued to mature and I developed another new enlightenment regarding why people disagreed with me. They did so because we did not fully share a common value system. As I thought back to the difficulty many people had with linking consecutive ideas, I realized that while their thinking process was like mine, their value for different directions at the point where the links emerged was influenced by their values for the alternatives that were presented. For example, if I said you should not do X and X was bad because it consisted of subparts A and B and B was especially bad, someone else might say “not true.” They disagreed even though they knew that X consisted of A and B, but it turned out that they did not actually care about B and hence while B was there, it was only A that mattered and A was fairly neutral in terms of badness, at least for them. So I realized that values associated with elements of the debate was what really mattered. For example, once I said you should not eat that particular food because it is bad for you and the reason it is bad is because it increases your cholesterol. But the person I was talking to had an unmedicated cholesterol level of 125 and I realized that I would never convince them to avoid that food, because for them increasing cholesterol was really not a problem that raised any level of concern for them. I felt pretty good about this way of resolving my inner conflict regarding disagreements and as long as I remembered this viewpoint and operated accordingly, I was not getting into so many arguments and life was good.

Now that I am getting comfortably past middle age, I have been told that my problem with people disagreeing was misunderstood and that it is time to adopt a greater new insight. The problem, some people are trying to explain to me, is actually an irrational subconscious reaction to my ideas by those who disagree. I had been introduced to the power of the explanation of phobias. These are irrational rejections of my argument on whatever the matter, due to the other’s dislike of some personal quality of mine, such as my inability to select clothes that fit together in a harmonious manner. In other words they are rejecting my view because they are phobic against my personage. This seems to be the most satisfying of all the theories that I have ever held regarding those who disagree with me. They are now clearly ignorant, stupid, illogical with the wrong value system because they are phobic. What a relief to finally understand once and for all the cause of all my disagreements with all the people who have ever questioned my opinions.

I can die sublimely happy now.