Bill Wolff's Bookmarks

You may think that I want to bring in ecology because O'Reilly's books all have animals on the cover, but it really does go deeper than that!

First off, ecology teaches us that it takes a web of cooperating species to
create a truly rich environment. Each of us depends on thousands, if not
millions, of other organisms, each pursuing its own selfish goals, yet somehow
weaving a cooperative web that, for the most part, benefits all. I believe that
open source has many parallels to a functioning ecology. Each developer builds
for his own use, and that of his friends, but also makes it easy for collateral
benefits to accrue to others he or she doesn't know. And the open source
developer contributes even his failures back into the environment, to enrich the
soil from which other innovations can grow.

Second, ecology teaches us that a rich environment takes time to evolve. One
species prepares the ground for another. For example, lichens and mosses break
down rock, creating soil that can support more complex plants. Ecological
succession takes time. But as the substrate laid down by simple organisms grows
richer, the possibilities for complexity increase.

The objective of sampling from a population is to select a subset of units from the population that is representative of the population with respect to the object of the study such as the presence or absence of infection. Sampling should be carried out in such a way as to provide the best likelihood that the sample will be representative of the population, within the practical constraints imposed by different environments and production systems. In order to detect the presence of an infection in a population of unknown disease status, targeted sampling methods that optimise the detection of infection can be used. In such cases, care should be taken regarding the inferences made from the results.

• Sampling methods

  When selecting epidemiological units from within a population, probability sampling (e.g. simple random selection) should be used. When this is not possible, sampling should provide the best practical chance of generating a sample that is representative of the target population.

  In any case, the sampling method used at all stages should be fully documented and justified.

• Sample size

  In general, surveys are conducted either to demonstrate the presence or absence of a factor (e.g. infection) or to estimate a parameter (e.g. the prevalence of infection). The method used to calculate sample size for surveys depends on the purpose of the survey, the expected prevalence, the level of confidence desired of the survey results and the performance of the tests used.

I think that to make the reader more interactive,
a real bricoleur, requires that the reader be provided with more
information about underlying structure. It is only on this metatextual
level that the structuring of hypertext, as well as hyperfiction,
occurs and J. David Bolter has quite fittingly cited Ricoeur writing
about the "followability" and second order writing of hypertext.
Slatin has a similar argument to make:

I think of hypertext coherence as appearing at the metatextual
level--that is, at the level where the reader perceives ... 'the
pattern which connects.' ... This metatextual level is perhaps
best represented by a visual map of some kind,...

This feeling
is also strenghtened by the use of an open book as the icon for
the links: after all, the reading of Afternoon does not differ so much from leafing through a printed book.

In fact, this relationship to a print book is reinforced by the
print button: using it produces a hard copy of the text, even
if it is from within the text window only. That is, the title
bar (each text window has a title bar), the buttons, or possible
background documents, are not printed. Thus it defines in its
own very concrete way what is considered as 'text proper.' This
means for example that the lexia-titles function more as technical
properties of links than they do as chapter titles in printed
fiction; however, it is difficult to define who is responsible
for this--the author, the programmer, the program used.