issue184---欢迎拍文作文修改小组

fchenyanUID: 2804020

TOPIC: ISSUE184 - "It is a grave mistake to theorize before one has data."
WORDS: 469
TIME: 00:49:53
DATE: 2010-07-12 13:27:37

The speaker asserts that it is a grave mistake to theorize without data. While data is very important to some theorize, but it is not always necessary. However, the speaker generalizes this conclusion taking a part for the whole, since not every theory requires data as a foundation. Moreover, the assertion ignores some special cases that data or their wrong attitude toward data cause demolition of theorize.

Firstly, I agree on the statement in the sense that there are theorizes need data as foundation. Some theories are reasoned on the basic of data to guarantee their correctness, and to exclude mistakes, researchers have to design nearly perfect experiments to test and certify their theories. What the experiments provide researchers are facts and what's more important is data. In some fields like biological, chemistry and computer science, researchers are working on mass of data. Repeated trails are aiming at data and when they want to publish their papers about some theory they have to provide enough data.

However, sometimes whether data is indispensible may vary from case to case. That is to say there are some special cases that need no data at all. I have a friend who is a graduate student of science of logic, during his research, what's most important is keeping strong system and logical thinking which has nothing to do with data at all. Nowadays, there are scholars overly aggrandized the roles data play, saying that everything can be solved by methods of mathematic even what will happen in the future. Such kind of assertion ignores that some theories are just logical and analytical.

Moreover, there are some particular cases that data plays a role of negative effect. With the development people are weakening some of their natural abilities and rely more on data. In their opinions, only data is scientific and can rely on. Sometimes the acquisition process of data has to much involvement of people which introduces error and inaccuracy, making the theorize not so scientific as people believed. On the basis of my experience of computational mathematics studying, most data that we graved by computing are not accurate. In the other side, the data cannot describe most problems since data is powerless in the face of continuity problem because of the nature of data--discrete.

People should introduce amendment into their attitude toward the relationship of data and theorize. Since time and energy are needed to collect enough data to support the reason of a theory. However, there are special cases that a theory is required urgently, as a basic of a unique decision when time is life and energy is in shortage. In this case, people would be too stick-in-the-mud to stick too much to data.

In summary, whether data is necessary should be based on analysis of a concrete problem.