What Is It?
You get three guesses:

Here at the start of allergy season, it kind of reminds me of a magnification of something I wouldn't want to inhale. But no.
Or maybe it's some multi-colored cotton candy?
Nope.
Some sort of network diagram?
Ah, getting closer, but not exactly. Give up?
[Answer below]
[Almost there]
It's a map of all the different paradigms of science:
This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Links (curved black lines) were made between the paradigms that shared papers, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms nearer one another when a physical simulation forced every paradigm to repel every other; thus the layout derives directly from the data. Larger paradigms have more papers; node proximity and darker links indicate how many papers are shared between two paradigms. Flowing labels list common words unique to each paradigm, large labels general areas of scientific inquiry.
You can get a full-sized copy of the map (25" x 24") here for free -- all they ask is that you cover the postage.
Comments
And now on the last arm:
"...parallel manipulators, flow controller, reluctance motor, unified power, and voltage stability."
Okay, got all that memorized. Might come come in handy.
:-)
Posted by: Stephen Gordon
|
March 22, 2007 09:47 AM
Unfortunately, they don't cover engineering very well. It is interesting how dominant medical science is. A lot more papers per researcher, I think. The bizarre thing about the "math" section is that the buzz word chains are mostly specialized stuff from the applied math side (topics in operator theory, fluid dynamics, differential equations, etc) with one chain about antennas. Most "real" work doesn't show up at all.
I guess this probably shows the insularity of the field. When one outside the field thinks math, one thinks antennas? Heh.
Posted by: Karl Hallowell
|
March 24, 2007 10:08 AM