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social, health, political imagery through the lens of G J Huba PhD © 2012-2021

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Here is a little experiment.

iMindMap of newly minted pseudo-words I have never used online before.

torken

Wordle of newly minted pseudo-words I have never used online before.

hypotheticalwordle

I will update this blog post with comments as the experiment continues. My bet is that the engines will find the content very rapidly.

June 4 2013. Thus far, the only word google has found is torken. I am assuming that is because the font and tilt are like normal test.

Thus far, the moral of the story seems to be that if you want google to not find a word in your mind map, use organic mind mapping. Conversely …

Since humans can readily see the words in both the mind map and the woordle, this does illustrate (that at least in this case) google is not working like the human brain. I will check Bing later and update this post.

More to come. I also want to see what happens with the output of other mapping and graphics programs. I would argue that if google cannot detect nonsense words that humans can see in an organic mind map but can see those that appear in a non-organic, flat mind map (such as those from Mindjet and Mindnode, and XMind), then that would tend to argue that organic mind mapping is more like human thinking.

I invite everyone who mind maps to run simple experiments like this. These are very easy to do.

Position Opening: Physician. Thousands of opening available throughout USA. All specialties. Highest priority for primary care.

Requirements:

Four-year medical degree, several years of supervised post-doctoral clinical experience. Additional research experience a plus. In possession of a medical license within the state of practice.

Proven effectiveness in communicating with ill, confused, poor, disenfranchised patients, many with co-occuring mental illness and/or chemical dependency and cognitive impairment. Fluency in written and oral Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Farsi, Tagalog, and Arabic a plus.

Ability to work closely with a multi-disciplinary team and communicate well with nurses, social workers, allied health professionals, patients, families, insurers, and malpractice lawyers all of whom may complain at any time that the physician asserts too much influence on patient care.

Willingness to work in conditions were salaries are decreasing annually, patient-doctor ratios are expected to be dramatically higher, and one will be subject to working long work weeks, religious and family holidays, and on an irregular schedule.

Ability to work in a larger healthcare system subject to rules of practice detrimental to patient care with unnecessary and inappropriate regulations, attacks from the public as well as politicians and the press, frivolous malpractice lawsuits that require expensive and lengthy litigation, and very high accompanying stress.

Ability to accurately make life-death decisions while stressed, tired, and in non-optimal settings. Willingness to do so for a low compensation rate.

Willingness to maintain licensure and take regular continuing education courses without compensation.

Ability to spend a large percentage of time completing unnecessary forms in order to obtain insurance reimbursement and to avoid frivolous malpractice lawsuits.

Compensation Range: very low to low.

Immediate openings throughout United States.

In the past, I thought it was quite ironic that the “pad” apps on the iPad were kind of junky. In the most recent updates that has changed. I now find that there are three great choices. Each is inexpensive. Here’s what I think.

Click on the image to zoom.

3 Legal Pads for the iPadiPhone

Biggerplate.com (@Biggerplate) has started to post video recordings of the presentations at their recent mind mapping conference in London on their web site.

The first four presentations are now available online at this link.

All four presentations are excellent and are by experts willing to talk to their peers frankly and clearly thus resulting in a very large exchange of bottom-line information.

The 20 minute presentation by Chris Griffiths (@GriffithsThinks) is probably the best talk on modern mind mapping I have ever seen; watch this if you want a jump start into modern mind mapping. I agree with about 90% of what Mr Griffiths says, and he is extremely articulate about the big issues.

This appears to have been a great conference. Four more similar conferences are being scheduled around the world, with two coming up in the USA (San Francisco, Chicago).

Liam Hughes and his staff at Biggerplate facilitated an excellent conference and more importantly, started a valuable ongoing communication process.

Highly recommended. If you believe that visual thinking (and mind mapping) can be useful in your field, try to watch some of these short videos. Like them, I do.

biggerplate 313

MMforKids

Toni Krasnic is an established expert in coaching and student development who is well-known in mind mapping circles as a superstar. Mr. Krasnic has written an accessible, concise, and research-based book on using mind maps and other visual learning tools with beginning students. In my opinion, the methods Mr. Krasnic introduces will be an increasing part of elementary school education in the next few decades. Usually in mind mapping books, the method of mind mapping in one computer program or another is the primary focus of the book. Mr. Krasnic places the emphasis where it should be: on using mind mapping tools to SUPPORT EFFECTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES. This is a book about learning and teaching and coaching and classroom exercises using visual learning methods. Mr. Krasnic does not tie the book to any commercial product but rather pairs the book content to learning theory, issues, and techniques. Many of the major mind mapping commercial products are introduced and there are many exceptional examples of mind maps that address real learning issues and support skill acquisition. This books is not about a flashy new computer program that makes pretty pictures. The book is about using powerful visual learning methods starting in elementary school and continuing through life to achieve mastery in many learning situations.

I wrote about the revolutionary e-dictionary Wordflex last week. During the past week I have become very convinced that is is one of the iPad apps every English-speaker needs. Especially every student.

I have explored a bunch of words and semantic networks and it has been a huge help to me. And, since it is backed by the Oxford Dictionary family, there is brilliant content within the database. This is a product where you don’t balk at the price; if you get it you will use it.

palsy-poster meditation-poster HIV-poster wordflex-poster wordflex 205 wordflex 208 wordflex 210

I confess. In 1979 Pete Bentler and I published an article entitled “Simple Minitheories of Love” in the highest prestige journal on personality and social psychology.

Blame it on the exploits of the greatest psychometrician of his generation and a 28 year-old wanna-be psychometrician, both active personality researchers, trying to convince the field that the new statistical modeling methods (Structural Equation Models; LISREL) they were testing would revolutionize the field (I was wrong on that one, too).

Now ask yourself why neither of these guys — nor any of the other main figures in the fields of psychometrics, sociometrics, personality, social psychology, attraction research — ever went on to start a web site to match individuals on the basis of personality and life style questionnaires (I won’t dignify them by calling them tests); such sites became quite lucrative. This was in spite of the fact that at least one (Huba) had the opportunity to do so during the years when he was the Vice President of R&D for a major psychological testing company and later when most of the other competing testing companies hired him as consultant. Or why did the major personality test developer of his generation and the owner of a psychological testing company (the late Doug Jackson) never consider developing such a product?

See a pattern here? Even the folks who made the most $$$ from psychological instruments and had the most influence in the psychological assessment journals and industry did not develop a Love Site.

I concede that a Love Site may be a good place to find people you might not never meet otherwise through your social and work friends and these might be good mates or sex partners. Or they might be psychopaths, perpetuators of sexual or domestic violence, dependent individuals, or alcoholics.

So far as I can tell from the undisclosed algorithms of the dating sites and their unpublished outcomes, I have no way of knowing for sure if the sites have a good chance of producing a good outcome and avoiding a terrible (and life-threatening) one. I suspect that if there were strong scientific evidence that the sites “work” in both cases, there would be a lot of scientific research published that supports this notion. Where is the incontrovertible evidence? Can I can read it or hear it at professional conventions? Claims on TV that a lot of people got married mean little or nothing without information about comparison groups or negative outcomes.

I would have no problem concluding that the Love Sites are effective if there were psychometric and other scientific evidence that the algorithms used are valid. Without such evidence, I worry that they are more voodoo and “smoke and mirrors” than places where you can find a mate and your date will not result in a rape. Of course I cannot prove my position is right, but neither can the Love Sites. My stance is safer for individuals.

There is that old fashioned system of “meet and greet and respect the people you meet” that did produce so many humans that we now have a problem with world-wide population growth. Sometimes older methods work better if you are patient.

Love Sites

If you have read this blog in the past few weeks, you know that I strongly support the notion of peer review of mind maps. However, I acknowledge it is not fair to to keep harping on this issue without providing some type of suggestions for implementing a system.

I selected BiggerPlate as my example because it is the largest and highest quality archive of mind maps I know of. I greatly support their work.

I believe that implementing such a system would increase the usefulness of mind map communication and advance this area of inquiry.

Click on the image to zoom in.

Plan Peer Review of Mind Maps

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Al,

I am disappointed in the mind maps in your new book. They do not explain, summarize, teach, or aid retention.

Here are a few suggestions.

Your political supporter, sharer of views about conditions and solutions, and admirer.

George

PS. Please click on the image to zoom in.

liked least in Al Gore's mind maps

In Al Gore’s new and compelling book, he makes extensive use of mind maps. The following mind map is my review of Al’s mind mapping technique, NOT the content which I greatly admire.

Click on the image to zoom in.

Al Gore Mind Maps