Good User Feedback

Via Fiona (Austhink's Education Coordinator):

1. Startup screen is great, but how do I get it back?
2. Spell-check please!
3. Some well-heeled schools are getting the powerful combo of tablet PCs for staff and all students in conjunction with a projector (in preference to smart-boards)
4. Text pane open/close button goes missing
5. Some lap-tops have neither mice nor track-pads, making dragging of maps painful

Observations:

• Many (most?) secondary-school students kick off an argument map with a question
• Often encouraged to do so by their teachers
  
• Students asking for links between boxes -- other than hierarchical relationships -- within a map
• Kids are becoming more visual and audial
• Connection to the synthesizing mind and the disciplined mind in Howard "multiple intelligences" Gardner's latest opus, Five Minds for the Future.

Other positives:

• .NET is becoming more pervasive (as more products require it)
• Installation process is smooth

A suspect for murder

Joseph Laronge presents a useful comparison of two different styles of mapping applied to the problem of whether Bob is a suspect for murder.

The first is an argument map:

and the second uses Laronge's own "path-mapping" conventions which he calls "pyramid style":

I have taken the time to do my own argument map, which in a way which gives I think the best of both worlds:

• The structure is largely taken from Laronge's particular path map, but
• The co-premises are pulled out, making it easy to show where the reasoning and evidence are open to challenge

It looks like argument mapping in a legal context is ripe for advancement. It will need people with skills in both mapping and the Law to work together to figure out how best to do it, both in terms of refining the method and conventions, and developing a sufficiently rich visual language.

In my example I would like to have been able to indicate through a strong visual device the following "legal concepts", which are somewhat implicit at present:

1. A piece of cited law
2. Which which "side" is favored by each premise

This could be accomplished in a few ways, but I will not go into that point at this stage. I am amore interested in finding out what else deserves to be reified in these kinds of maps.

Ideally, once the visual language is sorted out it should be possible to provide "road-maps" and templates that can be readily molded to reflect a particular case.

A big job indeed!

Clumping: The Missing Mode

Rationale -- the product that my working life revolves around -- currently has three mapping "modes": grouping; reasoning; and analysis.

Reasoning mode is for loose informal reasoning:


To tighten up the argument I use analysis mode, which allows me to break out the hidden premises:


Grouping mode allows me to create tree-like structures for non-reasoning purposes:


So while the reasoning and analysis modes provide specialized support for argument mapping, it is grouping mode that one turns to for all other tasks. I.e. Less sophisticated = more general.

And through the magic of our powerful "morphing" facilities it is possible to start working in one mode and then have Rationale convert the map into either of the other modes almost instantly. Very useful when you find yourself in the wrong mode!

So what's the missing mode?

In fact, it is possible to do reasoning in grouping mode, just without quite as much constraint as in reasoning mode, because fundamentally both of these modes manipulate "tree" structures.

What's missing is a mode which generalizes analysis in the same way that grouping
generalizes reasoning. Let's call this new mode clumping or clustering.

I am not quite sure what the applications will be, but I am confident that they will emerge.

Essays worth mapping

When I get some spare time -- ha! -- I plan to produce argument maps of some of the better essays (or excerpts thereof) that I can lay my hands on. Here is a list of a few that I came across recently:

• Knuth on Software Patents: An open letter to the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks from one of the great originators of ideas about algorithms
  
• Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: Most physical scientists assume that there isn't much to Economics, so let's get it out the way quickly!
• Stewart Brand, Environmental Heresies: A legendary environmentalist examines several issues that the environmental movement may well reverse its stance on in the next decade