Archive for November, 2011
Holding the Door Open
Sunday, November 27th, 2011This week, I need to start where I left off last week, with reproducibility. This week comes a facet to research that overlaps greatly with reproducibility—openness. If reproducibility is central to true research, there must be some way to see inside what someone else has done. It must be possible to understand not just the [...]
Research, Rinse, Repeat
Sunday, November 20th, 2011What is “research”? It seems like a simple question but it isn’t. What does research look like? What properties should it have? Research takes many forms, has many entries in the dictionary and can mean slightly different things in different fields. It can involve experiment, observation, testing, fact finding and theory development. In my old [...]
Ancestral Steampunk
Sunday, November 13th, 2011In the attic I have a small metal device that I inherited from my grandparents. It is a square box, open above and wider than it is tall. On top, there is a cage on hinged rods that run from the middle of the box to one side of the cage that allow the cage [...]
The Genealogist’s Memory
Sunday, November 6th, 2011Sometimes things just come together and force a post to be written. Last week I wrote about some stories of a man’s descent from some famous members of the Putnam family of Salem Village. None of those stories turned out to be true in the sense that he was not descended from any of the [...]