Observation Oriented Modeling is an alternative to traditional methods of data conceptualization and analysis that challenges researchers to develop integrated, explanatory models of patterns of observations. The focus of research is thus shifted away from aggregate statistics, such as means, variances, and correlations, and is instead directed toward assessing the accuracy of judgments based on the observations in hand. In this paper a number of example data sets will be used to demonstrate how Observation Oriented Modeling can be taught to undergraduate and graduate students. While the examples are drawn from psychology, the method of contrasting Observation Oriented Modeling with traditional methods of research design and statistical analysis can easily be adapted to examples from other sciences.

Observation Oriented Modeling: Preparing Students for Research in the 21st century1:

There is a wide range of realist but non-Platonist philosophies of mathematics—naturalist or Aristotelian realisms. Held by Aristotle and Mill, they played little part in twentieth century philosophy of mathematics but have been revived recently. They assimilate mathematics to the rest of science. They hold that mathematics is the science of X, where X is some observable feature of the (physical or other non-abstract) world. Choices for X include quantity, structure, pattern, complexity, relations. The article lays out and compares these options, including their accounts of what X is, the examples supporting each theory, and the reasons for identifying the science of X with (most or all of) mathematics. Some comparison of the options is undertaken, but the main aim is to display the spectrum of viable alternatives to Platonism and nominalism. It is explained how these views answer Frege’s widely accepted argument that arithmetic cannot be about real features of the physical world, and arguments that such mathematical objects as large infinities and perfect geometrical figures cannot be physically realized.

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Joseph A. Buckley

Papers

Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophy of Measure and the International System of Units (Si)