Over-Analyzation to obscure truth By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari& Variables 5
Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can
be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can't be fooled by the same man
in the same way more than half of the time. Helen Rowland
A good journalist does not deny blatant reality; he simply
obscures truth by overanalyzing it.
A good journalist knows that arguments can be self defeating
if he challenges ‘flagrant reality’; therefore he changes the nature of truth.
(Half
the time is an idiom which means "sometimes", "as often as not". For example, 'my
wife can't remember my name half the time' or 'half the time, I don't have the
slightest idea what he's talking about'.)
“The purpose of argument is
to change the nature of truth.” » Frank Herbert
· “There’s a world of difference between truth
and facts. Facts can obscure truth.” » Maya Angelou
·
“Truth suffers from too much
analysis.” » Frank Herbert
Helen Rowland Quotes
·
A man's desire for a son is usually nothing but
the wish to duplicate himself in order that such a remarkable pattern may not
be lost to the world.
·
In love, somehow, a man's heart is always
either exceeding the speed limit, or getting parked in the wrong place.
·
And verily, a woman need know but one man well,
in order to understand all men; whereas a man may know all women and understand
not one of them.
Lexical
borrowing
Lexical borrowing is another area in which the
Qur'an established precedent. The Holy Book draws
freely on words of non-Arabic origin, including Persian,
Sanskrit, and Syriac. The importance of the Qur'an in this respect can be better
understood against a deep-seated theme which can be discerned
in the writings of scholars of pre and early Islam, namely, that
the Arabian Peninsula was, during the pre-Islamic era, more or less isolated
from the rest of the world, and that the Arabic language, and consequently the
Qur'an, was the unique product of the Arabian desert.
Inherent in this theme is a belief in the
'purity' of the Arabic tongue and hence the scholars'
reluctance to agree with the fact that in its attempt to illustrate the breadth
of human religious experience the Qur'an drew on the lexicons
of other languages and religions.
Thus have We sent down this Arabic Qur'an (20:113)
It is obvious from the literature that the majority of the
earlier scholars, for example, al-Shafi'i, Ibn Jarir, Abu ' Ubayda, al-Qadi Abu
Bakr, and Ibn Faris, rejected the theory that some of the words of the Qur'an
were not of Arabic origin. The question of lexical borrowing and the existence of foreign
words in the Qur'an was viewed differently by different scholars. Thus the
earlier scholars maintained that the existence of foreign
words implied and inadequacy of the language. Al-Suyuti quoted Ibn Aws as
saying:
If the Qur'an had contained anything other than Arabic, then it
would be thought that Arabic was incapable of expressing those things in its
own words.
Later scholars, however, viewed lexical borrowing
differently. Thus, al-Suyuti explained that the adoption of some non-Arabic
words in the Qur'an took place because such words denoted objects or
ideas for which no Arabic words were readily available.
Examples include the Persian words 'istibraq' (a thick, silky brocade), 'ibriq' (a water jug); the
Nabatean word 'akwab'
(goblets); the Aramaic word 'asfar'
(a large book); the Hebrew borrowing 'rahman'
(merciful); and the Syriac words 'zayt'
(olive oil) and 'zaytun'
(the olive tree). The Qur'an has several hundred such foreign borrowings.
Earlier generations of Muslim scholars maintained that such
words were either ancient Arabic words that had gone out of use until the
revelation of the Qur'an, or that such words were ancient borrowings
introduced into Arabic long before the Revelation which had since then acquired
an Arabic pattern.
Whether we agree with the view that foreign words in the Qur'an
are direct borrowings from other languages or with the view that the majority
of these words were ancient borrowings which occurred in
pre-Islamic poetry and which had been in use long before the revelation of the
Qur'an, it is a fact that the Qur'an contains words that are not of Arabic
origin.
Such words come from a host of languages including Ethiopic,
Persian, Greek, Sanskrit, Syriac, Hebrew, Nabatean, Coptic, Turkish, and
Berber. By adopting words of non-Arabic
origin, the Qur'an may have helped to legitimize a very important
linguistic process, that of lexical borrowing. The importance of this
practice derives particularly from the fact that the use of foreign words was
viewed unfavorably by a large number of Arab scholars at that time
The term 'ajami (Persian,
foreign) was used strictly in reference to non-Arabic words to set them aside
from native Arabic words. During the documentation of the grammar
in the first three centuries of the Islamic calendar, the same term
was used to refer to less-than-native pronunciations of Arabic.
In their attempt to document the grammar, the early scholars
considered the speech of the bedouins in the heart of the desert to be the most
reliable and purest, apparently due to their belief that the bedouins
seldom left the desert or mixed with speakers of other languages. Likewise, the early
grammarians did not look favourably upon the adoption of foreign terms into
Arabic, apparently in the belief that borrowing would indicate certain
gaps or deficiencies in the language.
Since it contained words of non-Arabic origin, the Qur'an established
a precedent for lexical borrowing as a tool whereby languages may enrich themselves. This
was clearly one of the most innovative aspects of the Qur'an. It is
particularly important given the unfavorable climate that prevailed among the
early Muslim scholars with respect to lexical borrowing.
Main types of variables
The things that are changing in an experiment are called variables. A variable is
any factor, trait, or condition that can exist in differing amounts or types. An experiment usually has three kinds of variables:
independent, dependent, and controlled.
There are three main types
of variables in a scientific experiment:
Independent variables, which
can be controlled or manipulated
Dependent variables, which (we hope) are affected by our changes
to the independent variables.
Control variables, which must be held constant.
A control
variable (sometimes called a controlled variable). ...
A control variable is another factor in an experiment; it must
be held constant.
In the plant growth experiment, this may be factors like water and
fertilizer levels.
Kinds of Variables
Interval Variables:
A measurement of
something where the relationship among values is clearly defined in a quantitative manner.
Can say that one level is
a mathematically defined function of another.
Height, Income, Percent time spent
studying.
An income of $10000 is twice that of an
income of $5000.
Ordinal
Variables:
A qualitative assessment
of something where the relationship among levels of the variable is known but
only in a qualitative manner.
Ranks of things like preferences for
physical attributes in possible mates.
Nominal
Variables:
Qualitative assessment of something where relationship among
values of the variable is unknown.
Sex, ethnicity, religious affiliation.
All levels of the
variable must be mutually exclusive. That is, a person
cannot belong to more than one level of income or to more than one sex.
Latent vs. Manifest Variables:
Latent Variables:
These are the theoretical dependent and independent variables
that you wish to measure.
Latent variable. In
statistics, latent variables (from Latin: present participle of lateo (“lie
hidden”), as opposed to observable variables), are variables that are not directly observed but are rather
inferred (through a mathematical model) from other variables that
are observed (directly measured).
Your
overall health is a latent variable. But there isn’t a single measurement of “health”
that can be measured - it is a rather abstract
concept. Instead we measure physical properties from our bodies, such as blood pressure, cholesterol level, weight, various distances (waist, hips, chest), blood sugar,
temperature, and a variety of other measurements. These separate measurements
can be used by a trained person to judge your health, based on their experience of seeing these values
from a variety of healthy and unhealthy patients.
In this example, your health is a
latent, or hidden variable. If we
had a sensor for health, we
could measure and use that variable, but
since we don’t, we use other measurements
which all contribute in some way to assessing health.
(Sensor A device which detects or measures a physical property and
records)
Manifest Variables:
Observable variable or observable quantity (also manifest variables) as opposed to latent variable, is a variable that
can be observed and directly measured.
These are the things that you actually measure.
A manifest
variable, which can be observed directly and which can be used as
an indicator for the latent variable.
The goal is to achieve convergence between your manifest and
your latent variables to the degree that it is possible
The variable
cost ratio is an expression of a company's
variable production costs as a percentage of sales, calculated as variable
costs divided by total revenues. It compares costs that change with levels of
production to the amount of revenues generated by production. This contrasts
with fixed costs that remain constant regardless of production levels.
Latent Variable Theory
Latent Variable Theory
Now, it is generally agreed upon that variables like age
and gender are manifest. But what is it that makes the difference between a latent and
a manifest variable? Borsboom (2008) explicates this difference. In his latent variable theory, the distinction depends
on the certainty, with which an inference can be made from the observed data to
the variable in question. In this sense, a variable like gender is
manifest, because one can infer with certainty if a subject
is male or female from his or her answer on a questionnaire. Note that this is
possible, even though one has not actually observed the gender of that subject.
Borsboom's account of latent variable theory also implies that
the status of a variable as latent vs. manifest can change over time, if
for example more information becomes accessible. But as long as a variable has not
proven to be manifest, it remains latent.
It seems to me, then, that
pretty much every researcher in psychology should use latent variable modelling
techniques, since most of the time it is not at all possible to infer something
with certainty. However, this is clearly not the case. There are numerous
published articles that use manifest variables and analyze the relationships
between them without accounting for measurement error, thereby implicitly
making the latent variable in question a manifest variable.
Question: Under what circumstances is it
defendable to use manifest instead of latent variables in psychological
research, even if it is clear that the variables can only be measured with
error?
What are Observed Variables?
Observed variables (sometimes called observable variables or measured variables) are actually measured by the researcher. If
you’re working with structural equations models (SEM), they are data that actually exists in your
data files — data that has been measured and recorded. They can be discrete variables or continuous variables.
Observed variables can also be
sub-classified with other variable types. For example, an observed exogenous variable is not controlled by other variables
in the system (it is roughly equivalent to an independent variable in an experiment) while an
observed endogenous variable is affected by other variables
in the system (it is roughly equivalent to a dependent variable in an experiment). Further
classifications are also possible, such as dichotomous observed endogenous variables or
dichotomous observed exogenous variables, which are binary (i.e. they have a value of 0 or 1).
Comments
Post a Comment