Continuing this “new concept” theme….
… of how to get to the core concept behind a glob of text.
Last week we were looking for “compound concept” terms like “beach music,” or “summer romance.”
But it often happens that you know a little bit about the concept, but you don’t really understand quite enough to understand the concept in that context.
I gave an example using the word “level.” The actual email I got was from a friend who wrote:
“In that game, he really had to level up…”
And I wasn’t 100% sure I knew what he meant.
As you can imagine, this is an incredibly useful skill as you read.
Often you’ll see words in your text that you can’t quite figure out from context (especially when you’re reading something in a field in which you’re NOT an expert), so this is a great way to learn how to figure out those complex, hidden, subtle meanings.
Can you figure out how to pin down the definitions of these terms? Can you give a succinct definition? (In this sequence, #1 is easy, but #3 is harder.)
1. What is an “object” in computer programming?
2. What is a “model” when used with a bunch of equations to provide some explanatory structure?
3. In a book I just read, the author wrote, “Miles really knew how to jam in all those modes…” What’s a “mode”? (Don’t bother to look for this quote–I’ve modified it so you can’t figure it out that way….)
Here’s what I did. (And yes, I knew the definitions of all these terms ahead of time, but they’re still good examples of the skill & craft of finding out…)
1. An “object” in computer programming.
As several Regular Readers pointed out, the simplest way to get meaning from even a bit of context is to drop the term in with whatever context terms you have, and then skim or read broadly over the results, diving in on occasion to extract out the meaning.
Notice that there’s an inserted quote from Wikipedia at the very top (1) of the SERP. This is an extract from a highly cited source that’s relevant. In essence, it’s a definition of “object” when in the context of programming.
Looking farther down the SERP, at (2) you can start to scan the snippets describing each of the results pages. While I don’t recommend getting your answer solely from the snippets, they ARE useful as a way to start to scan for surrounding language and context. Here you can see that some other terms are useful to know–such as “class-based,” “instance,” “variable,” and “data structures.” (You also implicitly learn that many of the terms you’re reading–e.g., “instance–have alternate definitions in this world.
Notice also the “dig deeper” options at (3)–these are collected based on other questions that are asked in this context. Here you can get a mini-tutorial on “what is object-oriented programming” and start to figure out why the word “class” can mean so many different things!
Of course, you could always use the define operator in Google, BUT you have to expand the options by clicking on the downward pointing gray chevron (see below)
Once you do that, you’ll find that there’s a definition in the context of programming.
2. What is a “model” when used with a bunch of equations to provide some explanatory structure?
To understand this, I did more-or-less the same thing. My prompt for this question came from a message another friend sent to me which said:
“… as is obvious from the structural equation modeling of the situation…”
But it wasn’t really obvious. Somehow I’d missed that class at university, so I had to do a little backfilling in my knowledge of mathematics. And I did the query:
[ model equations structure ]
Note that I left “explain” out of the query. (If you include it, you end up with somewhat different results.)
My query led me to the results:
… which, handily, includes an entire “Introduction in Structural Equation Modeling.”
Structural equation modeling (SEM) an entire collection of mathematical models, algorithms, and statistical methods that match networks of constructs to data. (In other words, it’s a way to create simple network diagrams that explain what’s important in an underying math model of some situation.)
SEM includes confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, partial least squares path analysis, LISREL and latent growth modeling.
Importantly, note that “The term should not be confused with Structural Modeling in economics…”
3. In a book I just read, the author wrote, “Miles really knew how to jam in all those modes…” What’s a “mode”? (Don’t bother to look for this quote–I’ve modified it so you can’t figure it out that way….)