Re: [Phys-L] how research is done : exploring a maze using only local information

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 08/31/2015 06:23 PM, I wrote:

>   it should be 
>   possible to get it to run as a web-browser app, but that's
>   more work than I feel like doing at the moment.

Well, it was about 200 times harder than it should have been,
but I got the maze-exploration program to run interactively
in the browser.

  http://www.av8n.com/physics/glorpy-maze.html

This is a metaphor for how scientific research is done. Even if
you explore the maze as wisely and efficiently as possible, you
will spend a goodly amount of time exploring dead ends. This does
not mean that you made a bad decision, or made a mistake. It's 
just part of the cost of doing business.  See  
  http://www.av8n.com/physics/research-maze.htm
for further discussion.

    In absolute terms, the students who sign up for the physics
    class are not completely afraid of a challenge, not completely
    averse to risk.  Otherwise they would have chosen an easier 
    course.

However, in relative terms, relative to the professionals on this
list, and relative to where they ought to be by the end of the
course, they are waaaaaay too risk-averse.  They think that 
making a wrong turn is Wrong with a capital W, in the same way
that stealing is Wrong.  For years and years, they have been 
trained that they should know the outcome before starting the 
so-called «experiment».  The idea of doing a real experiment 
to *find out* the answer is foreign to them.  Exploring a maze
is a nice way to give them experience with the idea that backing
out of blind alleys is part of the cost of doing business.

When doing research, you do not get to see an overview of the 
maze.  If you want to see what the maze looks like, you have to 
earn that information by exploring.  You don't know where the 
cheese is, and you don't even know what it looks like ... and 
you won't know until you find it.

Accordingly, my maze app does not give you an overview of
the maze.  This makes solving it noticeably harder, and
noticeably more of an adventure.

The app has been tested under Firefox and Chrome on Linux.
It should be reasonably portable, although it is not expected 
to work on smartphones or other touchscreen devices.  The
whole point of making it run in the browser was to make it
convenient and portable.

See also next message.