Week 14: Scientific communication: the artifact, uncertainty, and ethics
What should a non-specialist be able to see, question, and trust?
Design stage: Scientific communication. Make the pipeline inspectable, reproducible, and interpretable for someone outside your field, and review its ethics.
Prepare for class
Read: Chapters 10 and 11; communicating your pipeline, and ethics as embedded practice. The chapters are in Canvas, and the companion page has the materials that go with them.
Reading focus: In Chapter 10, read the sections on building the integrative artifact and communicating uncertainty. In Chapter 11, read each section against the stage of your own pipeline it concerns.
Bring the result you will communicate, the table behind it, and the name of a non-specialist audience.
Weekly time budget
Outside class: 360 minutes (6 clock hours) maximum planned work per student. These allocations include all required preparation and submissions; they are planning estimates, not time logs for grading.
| Work | Planned minutes |
|---|---|
| Reading and discussion preparation | 90 |
| Exercises and project work, including troubleshooting | 180 |
| Writing, documentation, and reflection | 90 |
| Total | 360 |
Read Chapter 11 in full this week. Build the integrative artifact from results you already have, add the uncertainty view, and draft the ethics review from the chapter’s questions.
How the weekly cap works. If required work will exceed the budget, save your attempt and contact the instructor to adjust scope or arrange support.
From the book
Exercise 10.3.4 builds the artifact and Exercise 10.3.5 gives it an uncertainty layer. Chapter 11’s Reflective Exercises turn your own pipeline into the case: privacy as contextual integrity, the geography of measurement error, disclosure a reader can verify, and accountability.
- Exercise 10.3.4: Build an integrative communication artifact. Required.
- Exercise 10.3.5: Visualize the uncertainty in one of your computational results. Required.
- Exercise 10.3.2: Apply the 3-step viz-making framework. Optional.
- Exercise 10.3.3: Apply Kirk’s design process to one figure. Optional.
The book gives each exercise’s steps. What to submit, and when.
On the companion website: Chapter 10 materials and starter scaffolding · Communication tools
Monday, April 12: Build the integrative artifact
12:45–2:00 PM · PV A203
Do Exercise 10.3.4. Name the audience and their questions, choose a reproducible report, a dashboard, or an annotated notebook, and build at least three coordinated views from the companion’s starter scaffolding. Document the analytical choices behind each view, add a static fallback, and write the maintenance memo. Exercises 10.3.2 and 10.3.3 are optional preparation for one figure.
Check the reasoning: A folder of figures is not an integrative artifact. Show how your three views answer related questions about the same records, and state what the display excludes.
Wednesday, April 14: Uncertainty and ethics review
12:45–2:00 PM · PV A203
Do Exercise 10.3.5: rerun one result under at least three seeds or specifications, choose a visual strategy your audience can read, and add it to the artifact. Then draft the ethics review from Chapter 11’s Reflective Exercises, starting with whose cases your measurement errors fell on.
Check the reasoning: A model’s self-reported confidence is not calibrated. If a result depends on model-assigned labels, say that accuracy against human coding is the standard, and write a caption that states what your uncertainty does not cover.
Work to carry forward
Keep a note separating the durable analysis from the disposable interface. Finish the ethics review while the audit from Milestone 3 is fresh.
Due at the start of P539’s assigned final session:
- Milestone 5: Scientific communication (15 points)
- Milestone 6: Final presentation (10 points)
- Final reflection: the whole pipeline (10 points)
Assignments and deliverables · Your project · The book and companion website