scholarly journals The Powerful Influence of Marks: Visual and Knowledge-Driven Processing in Hurricane Track Displays

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lace Padilla ◽  
Sarah Creem-Regehr ◽  
William Thompson

Given the widespread use of visualizations to communicate hazard risks, forecast visualizations must be as effective to interpret as possible. However, despite incorporating best practices, visualizations can influence viewer judgments in ways that the designers did not anticipate. Visualization designers should understand the full implications of visualization techniques and seek to develop visualizations that account for the complexities in decision-making. The current study explores the influence of visualizations of uncertainty by examining a case in which ensemble hurricane forecast visualizations produce unintended interpretations. We show that people estimate more damage to a location that is overlapped by a track in an ensemble hurricane forecast visualization compared to a location that does not coincide with a track. We find that this effect can be partially reduced by manipulating the number of hurricane paths displayed, suggesting the importance of visual features of a display on decision making. Providing instructions about the information conveyed in the ensemble display also reduced the effect, but importantly, did not eliminate it. These findings illustrate the powerful influence of marks and their encodings on decision-making with visualizations.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Kao ◽  
Russell Furr

Conveying safety information to researchers is challenging. A list of rules and best practices often is not remembered thoroughly even by individuals who want to remember everything. Researchers in science thinking according to principles: mathematical, physical, and chemical laws; biological paradigms. They use frameworks and logic, rather than memorization, to achieve the bulk of their work. Can safety be taught to researchers in a manner that matches with how they are trained to think? Is there a principle more defined than "Think safety!" that can help researchers make good decisions in situations that are complex, new, and demanding?<div><br></div><div>Effective trainings in other professions can arise from the use of a mission statement that participants internalize as a mental framework or model for future decision-making. We propose that mission statements incorporating the concept of <b>reducing uncertainty</b> could provide such a framework for learning safety. This essay briefly explains the definition of <b>uncertainty</b> in the context of health and safety, discusses the need for an individual to <b>personalize</b> a mission statement in order to internalize it, and connects the idea of <b>greater control</b> over a situation with less uncertainty with respect to safety. The principle of reducing uncertainty might also help <b>non-researchers</b> think about safety. People from all walks of life should be able to understand that more control over their situations provides more protection for them, their colleagues, and the environment.</div>


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-177
Author(s):  
Michael B. Dilling ◽  
Anne C. DiSante ◽  
Ross Durland ◽  
Christine E. Flynn ◽  
Leonid Metelitsa ◽  
...  

Collaborations between academia and industry are growing in scope, duration, and sophistication. The best collaborations recognize the unique strengths and skill sets of both parties and are structured to leverage what each party does best. In many cases, these collaborations develop into long-term relationships, and it is important to develop the systems and structures needed to support these relationships to ensure that they meet the needs of both sides. Successful collaborations require the formulation of a governance structure to facilitate communication, decision-making, assessment of progress, and the inevitable changes of direction that accompany product development. This panel explored the pragmatic aspects of successfully structuring collaborations and managing the relationships after the deal is done. Several dominant themes associated with successful collaborative relationships emerged from the discussion, and these will be explored in this article.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Rocque ◽  
Ellen Miller-Sonnet ◽  
Alan Balch ◽  
Carrie Stricker ◽  
Josh Seidman ◽  
...  

Although recognized as best practice, regular integration of shared decision-making (SDM) approaches between patients and oncologists remains an elusive goal. It is clear that usable, feasible, and practical tools are needed to drive increased SDM in oncology. To address this goal, we convened a multidisciplinary collaborative inclusive of experts across the health-care delivery ecosystem to identify key principles in designing and testing processes to promote SDM in routine oncology practice. In this commentary, we describe 3 best practices for addressing challenges associated with implementing SDM that emerged from a multidisciplinary collaborative: (1) engagement of diverse stakeholders who have interest in SDM, (2) development and validation of an evidence-based SDM tool grounded within an established conceptual framework, and (3) development of the necessary roadmap and consideration of the infrastructure needed for engendering patient engagement in decision-making. We believe these 3 principles are critical to the success of creating SDM tools to be utilized both within and outside of clinical practice. We are optimistic that shared use across settings will support adoption of this tool and overcome barriers to implementing SDM within busy clinical workflows. Ultimately, we hope that this work will offer new perspectives on what is important to patients and provide an important impetus for leveraging patient preferences and values in decision-making.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Gendreau ◽  
Shelley J. Listwan

The mantra of best practices in corrections, while well intended, may lead to iatrogenic consequences. Community corrections and prisons are under increasing pressures to manage their caseloads; moreover, the current accountability and get-tough agenda in corrections demands offenders take on more responsibility for their behaviors. As a consequence, we predict more episodes of “panaceaphilia” or quick fix solutions because corrections jurisdictions in the United States are under tremendous pressure to handle their populations at this point in time. In this article, we focus on contingency management programs as the potential next panacea, not because they do not have a proven track record of success, but because they require highly skilled staff and make great demands upon correctional agencies’ decision-making practices. To help counteract panaceaphilia from happening with contingency management, we describe the theory and practice of contingency management, the demands they place on programmers, the type of research needed to evaluate their effectiveness, and how to prevent these programs from turning into punitive punishment regimes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Falzer

A recent essay in this journal identified health care as a fertile domain for extending the reach of naturalistic decision making (NDM). It targeted the “best practices regimen,” a host of initiatives begun in the late 20th century that address problems in service delivery, skyrocketing costs, and impediments in transforming products of basic science into effective treatments. Of particular importance are efforts to base treatment decisions on empirical research findings and to gauge the quality of decisions by their conformance to evidence-based practices. The challenges that the essay identified and the ways of addressing these challenges are well known in the health care community. They have had limited impact owing to several factors, including how advocates of the best practices regimen envision clinical decision making and their tendency to equate the exercise of skill with resistance to change. This paper describes the regimen’s concept of decision making and its principles and deficiencies. It also identifies a conundrum: oversimplification prevents complexity from being recognized; as a result, evidence-based recommendations frequently have unforeseeable and deleterious consequences. The paper proposes that NDM is well positioned to address these problems and make a valuable contribution to health care practice. It illustrates NDM-based theories and concepts with a research example and describes their ability to address complex issues that arise in treating chronic illnesses.


The Last Card ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 328-343
Author(s):  
Richard H. Immerman

This chapter argues—using the Eisenhower administration as a model of peacetime national security decision making—that the surge decision-making process displayed by the oral histories was idiosyncratic, excessively compartmentalized, and profoundly flawed. No president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has fully adopted his model, and each has tailored procedures appropriate for his needs. The Bush process had to take into account his lack of expertise in military affairs, an increasingly polarized political climate, the legacy of the Vietnam War, the proliferation of leaks of sensitive information in the new media age, the resistance of the uniformed military leadership, and most important, Rumsfeld. Administration insiders argue that for these reasons Bush jettisoned fundamental tenets of Eisenhower's system in an effort to make a virtue out of necessity. Yet the evidence suggests that Eisenhower's best practices are just that—best practices. It further suggests that their rigorous application would have benefited Bush's process by expediting the instigation of a comprehensive review, co-opting opponents of a change in strategy, mitigating politicization, facilitating the exchange of information and advice, and accelerating implementation.


We the Gamers ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
Karen Schrier

Chapter 9 describes how games may help in the practice of critical skills such as reasoning, making decisions, and reflection. How do people ask questions and posit answers, and how might games support this? What are the best practices and strategies for supporting critical thinking using games? The chapter includes an overview of why decision-making and reflection matter in civics and ethics, and why games may support this. It also includes the limitations of using games to explore peoples’ choices, and how to minimize those limitations. Finally, it reviews strategies that teachers can take to use games to practice skills related to critical thinking. It opens with the example of the game Life Is Strange, and also shares three examples-in-action: Moral Machine, Undertale, and Walden.


Author(s):  
Barbara Vis ◽  
Sjoerd Stolwijk

Abstract Conducting quantitative research (e.g., surveys, a large number of interviews, experiments) with the participation of political elites is typically challenging. Given that a population of political elites is typically small by definition, a particular challenge is obtaining a sufficiently high number of observations and, thus, a certain response rate. This paper focuses on two questions related to this challenge: (1) What are best practices for designing the study? And (2) what are best practices for soliciting the participation of political elites? To arrive at these best practices, we (a) examine which factors explain the variation in response rates across surveys within and between large-scale, multi-wave survey projects by statistically analyzing a newly compiled dataset of 342 political elite surveys from eight projects, spanning 30 years and 58 countries, (b) integrate the typically scattered findings from the existing literature and (c) discuss results from an original expert survey among researchers with experience with such research (n = 23). By compiling a comprehensive list of best practices, systematically testing some widely held believes about response rates and by providing benchmarks for response rates depending on country, survey mode and elite type, we aim to facilitate future studies where participation of political elites is required. This will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of political elites’ opinions, information processing and decision making and thereby of the functioning of representative democracies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document