thought files

[thought-files]

“...  pattern is not something that is inherent in data, but only appears when the data are analysed in a particular way.”

[thought-files]

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less." 

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." 

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."

https://www.thoughtco.com/humpty-dumpty-philosopher-of-language-2670315

[thought-files]

In the recent past, availability of large data sets of species presences has increased by orders of magnitude. This, together with developments in geographical information systems and statistical methods,...

tonight’s reading

[thought-files]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaunay_triangulation

"...a Delaunay triangulation for a given set P of discrete points in a plane is a triangulation DT(P) such that no point in P is inside the circumcircle of any triangle in DT(P)... Delaunay triangulations maximize the minimum angle of all the angles of the triangles in the triangulation...”

“For modelling terrain or other objects given a set of sample points, the Delaunay triangulation gives a nice set of triangles to use as polygons in the model. In particular, the Delaunay triangulation avoids narrow triangles (as they have large circumcircles compared to their area). See triangulated irregular network.

Delaunay triangulations can be used to determine the density or intensity of points samplings by means of the Delaunay tessellation field estimator (DTFE).”

[thought-files]

[thought-files]

an approach to modelling

[thought-files]

“Every one [sic] has heard that when an American forest is cut down, a very different vegetation springs up; but it has been observed that ancient Indian ruins in the Southern United States, which must formerly have been cleared of trees, now display the same beautiful diversity and proportions of kinds as in the surrounding virgin forests. What a struggle must have gone on during the long centuries between the several kinds of trees, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and insect – between insects, snails and other animals with birds and beasts of prey – all striving to increase, all feeding on each other, or on the trees, their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees.”

-- Charles R. Darwin,  The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

On succession.

No one says it better than The Man.

[thought-files]

from Löther 1990: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-2107-8_31#page-1