Thanks! Re: Giardino's work: yes! One of the long-term goals of this project is to hook up with the literature on mathematical diagrams -- roughly to answer *why* scientists have found graphs so useful in both analyzing data communicating results. But that's a ways away at the moment.
I'm hoping -- job market willing -- that this is the first in a series of papers on graphs and their role in the sciences. As I show in this popular pice, there's a lot of potential value in bringing tools from philosophy to bear on graphs and graphing: www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2024...
In which Corey Dethier explores the meaning of scientific graphs and revisits the John Christy climate controversy
a commitment that I suggest we find not just in graphical presentations but in much of linguistic testimony as well. I end by arguing that this move can help us resolve some apparent problems in the literature on scientific tesitmony, such as the alleged conflict between honesty and idealization.
What makes this project difficult are choices -- like y-axis scaling -- that don't undermine accurately plotting the data but affect what people "see" when they look at the graph. What's needed, I suggest, is a notion of commitment to a "perspective" ...
Happy to say that my paper "How do you assert a graph?" is now officially forthcoming at Nous and available (for free) below. Roughly: graphs are ubiquitous in scientific testimony, but extant accounts of proper testimony apply only to sentences. How do we fix that? philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24016/
My memory is that Hitchcock and Velasco have some examples along the lines of what you're thinking of in "Evolutionary and Newtonian Forces," but it may be that they only discuss deviations from the HW baseline.
I recognize that this is the second joke I've taken seriously in one thread, but it does make me wonder what the median last name is among academics. I'm saying Jones.
This is why everyone cares about author order. You gotta get your name on the spine.
The library copy of Casella and Berger's *Statistical Inference* that I apparently keep within arm's reach at all times just says "Casella" on the spine. I asked the librarian about it and they said it was pretty standard for older bindings. (Not that you were asking a question, but hey.)
Also, big shoutout to @climateofgavin.bsky.social, whose been on this fight for a decade and whose work inspired this particular investigation.