Abstract
This paper is about the uniquity and importance of qualitative reasoning about quantitative phenomena. From A–B testing and recommender systems to Covid modelling and climate change, numbers and data drive so much of both the work we do within HCI itself and the applications we work on. Sometimes this requires precise calculations, but often decisions or explanations are more qualitative taking into account general tendencies of numeric systems. This is important for our work within HCI when dealing with quantitative data including dynamic systems, and also as we create tools for those teaching, presenting or working with numeric phenomena.
Keywords: public understanding of numbers, quantitative methods, big data, complexity
Qualitative Quantitative Reasoning – May 2021 from Alan Dix on Vimeo.
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