The Accidentals Tourist

Since the 1980s, editorial theorists and proponents of ‘unediting’ have chipped away at W. W. Greg’s “Rationale of Copy-Text”, speculating that the accidental/substantive division is deceptively reductive, as even minor variants can have major implications. This essay contextualizes debates over Greg’s “Rationale” by recognizing that his theory of accidentals was a practical affordance designed to ensure that a copy-text (and often a specific document) could be reconstructed by working backwards from a scholarly edition — a vital bibliographic resource in an age before scholars were easily able to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in order to check variant copies. By considering shifting editorial values alongside the rapid development of the technologies of travel, ‘The Accidentals Tourist’ demonstrates that theoretical texts — and the subsequent revisions and corrections of them — are the products of the affordances of their own historical moments.

Courage under fire: Re-evaluating Black Hawk Down and the Battle of Mogadishu

The current understanding of Black Hawk Down is based on two assumptions: allegations of tired tactics and claims by Somali National Alliance leader Mohammed Farrah Aideed. These assumptions, accepted without much analysis or supporting evidence, stem from analysing Black Hawk Down working backwards from after the event, with a predeterminant methodology. This article examines the causation objectively, showing these assumptions as evidentiary weak, and instead highlights the actions of another American unit, Team Courage, as a potential factor in the events of 3 October, universally overlooked thus far, prompting a reinterpretation of the existing narrative, the SNA as an enemy, and the veracity of Aideed’s claims.

GPS: Working Backward with Data

This month's Growing Problem Solvers focuses on Data Analysis across all grades beginning with visual representations of categorical data and moving to measures of central tendency using a “working backwards” approach.

Working backwards revisited – Facetten, Arten und Problemtypen

Rückwärtsarbeiten gilt als eine der ältesten heuristischen Strategien mit besonderer Bedeutung für die historische Entwicklung der Mathematik (Engel, 1998; Zimmermann, 1991). Auch heutzutage wird es als wichtiger Ansatz gesehen, der beispielsweise von Pólya (1967) als allgemeines Vorgehen beim mathematischen Problemlösen empfohlen wird, sofern es keinen speziellen Grund für ein anderes Prozedere gibt. In diesem Beitrag soll zunächst das Rückwärtsarbeiten bzw. die Analysis als heuristische Methode aus historischer Perspektive beleuchtet werden, wobei wir lediglich auf ausgewählte Aspekte eingehen können. Es schließen sich aktuelle mathematikdidaktische Überlegungen zum Rückwärtsarbeiten an, davon ausgehend können Aufgabentypen zum Rückwärtsarbeiten identifiziert und verschiedene Arten des Rückwärtsarbeitens bei der Auseinandersetzung mit diesen beschrieben werden.

Latin Proclitics II

While Chapter 4 considered the late antique evidence for Latin grammarians’ thought on proclitic words, Chapter 5 considers the much scantier evidence dating from the first three centuries AD, working backwards in time from comments in a glossary preserved on a third-century AD papyrus (P.Sorb. inv. 2069) to comments in Aulus Gellius, Velius Longus, Quintilian, and a fragment of Remmius Palaemon. The chapter argues that these texts repeatedly present us with a picture compatible with what we find in late antique grammatical texts, and sheds new light on the notoriously difficult discussion in Quintilian.

Backwards or forwards? Direction of working and success in problem solving

We pose ourselves the question: What can one infer from the direction of working when solvers work on the same task for a second time? This is discussed on the basis of 44 problem solving processes of the TIMSS task K10. A natural hypothesis is that working forwards can be taken as evidence that the task is recognized and a solution path is recalled. This can be confirmed by our analysis. A surprising observation is that when working backwards, pivotal for success is (in case of K10) to change to working forwards soon after reaching the barrier.