Define interesting. Personally, I find the entropic analysis of spoken Engligh vs. sign language pretty interesting, especially so when they relate it to channel capacity and other information-theoretic stuff. Your comment sounds anti-intellectual.
Not a thing wrong with that. Fwiw, I file Technology Review with Wired and SciAm. That is, fluff. Hardly intellectual material imho.
>I find the entropic analysis of spoken Engligh vs. sign language pretty interesting
That would be interesting if they weren't using so poor an approach. Constraining the analysis to handshapes goes too far. Like constraining English analysis to vowel sounds, or removing prepositions.
Maybe the paper gives the wrong impression but it sounds like the parameters of the study were determined by someone with very little understanding of how ASL actually works.
(edited: formatting)
Sure, TR and Wired are fluff. Except that the article links to an arXiv paper. This is not a standard TR article. Moreover, you can't present scientific research in half a page without making it fluff. That, too, is an interesting information-theoretic problem.
"That would be interesting if they weren't using so poor an approach."
You missed the forest for the trees. In case you didn't notice, the people who wrote the paper are electrical engineers. They used the information-theoretic approach that is used in communications theory to a problem outside the traditional scope of application of the theory. Sure, natural language is hard, but if you start your research by focusing on all the little details you will get nowhere. To me, the paper looks like a first shot at a difficult problem. If you can do better, I would love to hear about it.
"...it sounds like the parameters of the study were determined by someone with very little understanding of how ASL actually works."
That is not the point. The point is that someone who does indeed understand how ASL works can read the paper, find out what is missing and build on it. No one knows everything, and inter-disciplinary work is very hard. Your criticism is too hard, because no one ever built a theory in one single iteration.
I just disagree. I have some familiarity with ASL and I feel they've gone off in the wrong direction from the start. I suppose you could say that a future study could build on this one by completely debunking it. Perhaps that argument has some merit.
>Your criticism is too hard
Probably. But I got the feeling from the paper itself that this is someone's last-minute rush to finish a thesis or fulfill a grant obligation or something. I guess I'd like to see a little passion in my science. Sorry if that seems too harsh.
I know a bit of information theory, but I know zero of ASL. It's quite possible that they went in the wrong direction from the start, but someone can still write a paper to point that out and prevent other people from repeating the same mistake. There's value in going in the wrong direction: it serves as a warning to others.
"I guess I'd like to see a little passion in my science. Sorry if that seems too harsh."
Personally, I found the paper's presentation horrible. I would never submit something so visually unappealing under my name. I agree that it sounds like a last-minute rush to finish something. I also agree that there seems to be little passion in it.
However, let us look at the authors: 1st author in an EE undergrad, 2nd author is a post-doc, 3rd author is a professor. Of course, the undergrad did all the work, the post-doc guided him, and the professor secured the grants that paid for the effort. Despite all the paper's flaws, I still think it must be judged for what it is: an EE undergrad trying his luck outside his field... and failing, perhaps.