View source for User:MichaelMcGuffin

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'''Michael J. McGuffin''', Ph.D.

My real homepage: [http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mjmcguff/ Michael J. McGuffin's homepage at DGP lab]

I am a [[computer science]] researcher currently ([[2007]]) at the [[Ontario Cancer Institute]] in [[Toronto]], [[Canada]]. My professional interests are in [[human-computer interaction]] and [[Visualization (graphic)|visualization]].

I've been making [[Special:Contributions/MichaelMcGuffin|contributions]] to Wikipedia since June 2004, including:
* photograph of [[:Image:CherryLatticePastry.jpg|cherry lattice]] at [[lattice]], that later got moved to [[Lattice (pastry)]]
* partially cleaned up [[human-computer interaction]], [[input device]] and some related articles
* created article on [[Accot's steering law]], and later moved content to [[Accot-Zhai steering law]] which was later moved to [[Steering law]]
* significantly revised article on [[Hick's law]]
* significantly revised article on [[Fitts' law]] (including anonymous edits made June 14, 2004)
* contributed section on "Representing Trees" to [[tree structure]]

Editing articles on the Wikipedia is a fun way to procrastinate and learn about collaborative editing.  I find the user interface for browsing and editing the Wikipedia very nicely designed.

I am both impressed by the (''apparent'') quality of some articles in the Wikipedia, and discouraged by the patchiness and presence of errors in articles related to my own expertise.  Especially problematic are errors that are subtle and/or stated with confidence, and would probably pass as believable to a non-expert.  Although I do have fun spending time editing and improving articles, the ones in my area still leave a ''lot'' to be desired.  Therefore, '''I do not endorse the accuracy, quality, coverage, or authority of any Wikipedia articles''', ''even those heavily edited by me'', since I can only commit limited time to this effort.

I normally prefer to be fairly careful in my technical writings, but in the case of the Wikipedia, I have tried to embrace the Wikipedia's philisophy of small, incremental, immediate improvements, even when these may leave many errors still present in an article. For more on this philosophy, see
* [[Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages]]
* [[Wikipedia:Editing policy]]
* [[Wikipedia:Replies to common objections]]

----

Update (August 2004): I've realized that there's more to the wikipedia than contributing and polishing articles in one's own area(s) of expertise.  The wikipedia can serve as a shared place for storing all sorts of tidbits of information.  For example, if you discover an interesting website, rather than bookmark it in your private files, consider finding an appropriate article in the wikipedia and adding a link to the site.  You'll still be able to find the link at a later date, and in addition you'll be sharing it with anyone else who reads the wikipedia article.  Another example: if you have a question about something, and can't find the answer online easily, rather than posting your question to a newsgroup, why not add the question to the discussion section of an appropriate article?  Then, whoever answers your question can add the answer to the wikipedia article, which should be easy for you to find at a later date, and also shares the answer with future readers of the article.  Another example: think back to times in your education where you've had an "aha!" moment, where you learned or gained some critical insight that allowed you to finally understand a concept which had challenged you up until then.  Have you ever thought to yourself: "If only someone had explained it to me ''that'' way earlier!"?  Now, you can go find an appropriate wikipedia article, and make sure it ''does'' explain things the way you had wished (while not excluding other valid ways, of course), so that some portion of future readers may benefit from your experience and hopefully understand better or faster.

An attractive feature of the wikipedia is that, any information you store in it, whether it be a carefully written, researched, and detailed article, or just a small tidbit of data, is available to both you and others in the future, and will also outlive you and the lifespan of your personal, private files.  Whatever time and effort you put into gathering data will not be lost when you die, if the data is stored in a shared place and made available to others.  So in a small way, [[Wikipedia:Wikipedians|wikipedian]]s achieve immortality by committing their knowledge to the wikipedia.  (I'm assuming of course that the wikipedia, or some form of it, will be around for a long time.  At the very least, it will likely survive as an interesting snapshot of knowledge for future historians.)

==other stuff i've edited==
* [[Talk:Magnetic field]]
* [[Talk:Bootstrapping]]
* [[Talk:The Emperor's New Mind]]

==some interesting wikipedia articles==
[[Geek]] stuff ([[computer science]], [[physics]], [[mathematics]], [[linguistics]])
* [[hypercomputation]]
* [[maze generation algorithm]]
* [[Archon (computer game)]]
* [[planck units]]
* [[Mathematics of paper folding]]
* [[Evariste Galois]], [[Niels Henrik Abel]], [[Quintic equation]]
* [[Maria Gaetana Agnesi]]
* [[constructed language]]
* [[Cline]]
* [[Mondegreen]]
* [[Hyponym]] (is-a), [[Meronymy]] (part-of)
* [[Chiasmus]]
* [[False etymology]]

Fantasy and role-playing games
* [[Eldar (Warhammer 40,000)]]
* [[Necron]]
* [[Illithid]] and [[Cthulhu]]
* [[Neogi]]
* [[Underdark]]
* [[Beholder]]
* [http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/ag]

[[Visualization]] / [[statistics]] stuff
* [[Choropleth]]
* [[Nomogram]]
* [[Cladogram]]
* [[Dendrogram]]
* [[Scattergram]]
* [[Freedman-Diaconis rule]]
* [[Gantt chart]]
* [[Diagram]] (see also the corresponding Category:Diagrams)
* [[Chart]] (see also the corresponding Category:Charts)
* [[List of graphical methods]]
* [http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/]
* [http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/milestone/]
* [http://otal.umd.edu/Olive/]


"Philosophy" (of perception, consciousness, god)
* [[swamp man]]
* [[trichromat]] and [[mantis shrimp]]
* [[agnosticism]]

Zoology
* [[Evolution of the eye]]
* [[giant isopod]]
* [[mantis shrimp]]

Misc
* [[Pungency]] and [[Scoville scale]]

Political stuff
* [[Noam Chomsky]]
* [[E-democracy]]
* [[Voting system]]
* [[United States budget process]]
* [[Central Intelligence Agency]]
* [[Philip Agee]]
* [[Starfish Prime]]
* [[ECHELON]]
* [[Project MKULTRA]]
* [[Worldwide Attack Matrix]]
* [[9/11 Commission]]
* [[9/11 conspiracy theories]]
* [[Carlyle Group]]
* [[Halliburton]]
* [[Trilateral Commission]]
* [[Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.]]
* [[Henry Kissinger]]
* [[Oscar Romero]]
* [[Orlando Letelier]]
* [[Ngo Dinh Diem]]
* [[Operation PBSUCCESS]]
* [[United States and the United Nations]]
* [[North American Free Trade Agreement]] (NAFTA)
* [[Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives]]
* [[Telecommunications Act of 1996]]
* [[George Soros]]
* [[Dick Morris]]
* [[Bretton Woods system]]
* [[IMF]]
* [[World Bank]]
* [[WTO]]

[[Category:Wikipedians in Toronto|MichaelMcGuffin]]