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From: Vladimir Vassilevsky on 14 Jul 2010 20:23


Manny wrote:

> What if you discovered by sheer luck that doing something wanky like
> skipping a beat works wonders to your signal? Sure this is uncool,
> inelegant, and can't be analyzed, only characterized. Do you scrap all
> this and wake up next day pretending that nothing has happened?

It depends. I am cautious about those empirical things. They tend to
work great in some cases and fail disgracefully in the other cases.

Vladimir Vassilevsky
DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant
http://www.abvolt.com
From: Manny on 14 Jul 2010 20:55
On Jul 15, 1:23 am, Vladimir Vassilevsky <nos...(a)nowhere.com> wrote:
> Manny wrote:
> > What if you discovered by sheer luck that doing something wanky like
> > skipping a beat works wonders to your signal? Sure this is uncool,
> > inelegant, and can't be analyzed, only characterized. Do you scrap all
> > this and wake up next day pretending that nothing has happened?
>
> It depends. I am cautious about those empirical things. They tend to
> work great in some cases and fail disgracefully in the other cases.

Noted! Although for completeness---as I now realize I sounded too
dramatic above---these ad hoc, empirical techniques are not as blind
as they might come across really. I.e. if you know some properties
about your expected signal, could rigour be substituted for intuition
every blue moon? I don't know the answer for that, and I'm certainly
not in a position to advocate for anything here.

-Momo
From: maury on 15 Jul 2010 08:23
On Jul 14, 7:55 pm, Manny <mlou...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 15, 1:23 am, Vladimir Vassilevsky <nos...(a)nowhere.com> wrote:
>
> > Manny wrote:
> > > What if you discovered by sheer luck that doing something wanky like
> > > skipping a beat works wonders to your signal? Sure this is uncool,
> > > inelegant, and can't be analyzed, only characterized. Do you scrap all
> > > this and wake up next day pretending that nothing has happened?
>
> > It depends. I am cautious about those empirical things. They tend to
> > work great in some cases and fail disgracefully in the other cases.
>
> Noted! Although for completeness---as I now realize I sounded too
> dramatic above---these ad hoc, empirical techniques are not as blind
> as they might come across really. I.e. if you know some properties
> about your expected signal, could rigour be substituted for intuition
> every blue moon? I don't know the answer for that, and I'm certainly
> not in a position to advocate for anything here.
>
> -Momo

Manny,
It's certainly not unusual to discover something, and then spend years
trying to show why it works or prove why it works.

Maurice
From: Jerry Avins on 15 Jul 2010 09:37
On 7/15/2010 8:23 AM, maury wrote:
> On Jul 14, 7:55 pm, Manny<mlou...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jul 15, 1:23 am, Vladimir Vassilevsky<nos...(a)nowhere.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Manny wrote:
>>>> What if you discovered by sheer luck that doing something wanky like
>>>> skipping a beat works wonders to your signal? Sure this is uncool,
>>>> inelegant, and can't be analyzed, only characterized. Do you scrap all
>>>> this and wake up next day pretending that nothing has happened?
>>
>>> It depends. I am cautious about those empirical things. They tend to
>>> work great in some cases and fail disgracefully in the other cases.
>>
>> Noted! Although for completeness---as I now realize I sounded too
>> dramatic above---these ad hoc, empirical techniques are not as blind
>> as they might come across really. I.e. if you know some properties
>> about your expected signal, could rigour be substituted for intuition
>> every blue moon? I don't know the answer for that, and I'm certainly
>> not in a position to advocate for anything here.
>>
>> -Momo
>
> Manny,
> It's certainly not unusual to discover something, and then spend years
> trying to show why it works or prove why it works.

Maury, I'll push that along even further. A lot of junk science comes
from people who make up an explanation for something they observe but
don't understand.* Sometimes that's even rational. There are people
won't believe /what/ unless there's an accompanying /how/.

Jerry
______________________________________
* If you screw out a light bulb and put your finger in the hole, it
hurts a lot. A spirit lives there and bites you if intrude.
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
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