The point I’m raising is independent of the example. “Looking for a correlation” is never the beginning of an enquiry, and, pace mukashi, is not necessarily a part of the enquiry. What is this Scientist really wanting to study? What is the best way to study that?
I work with biologists who study plants, trying to work out how various things happen, such as the development of leaf shapes, or the development of the different organs of flowers, or the process of building cell walls out of cellulose fibrils. Whatever correlations they might from time to time measure, that is subordinate to questions of what genes are being expressed where, and how biological structures get assembled.
That may be the case, but I think that is peripheral to the point of this post. If for some reason I wanted to find out the value of a variable (and this variable could be anything, including a correlation), how would I go about doing it.
I am taking the point of the post to be as indicated in the title and the lead: creating a model for doing Empirical Science. Finding out the value of a variable — especially one with no physical existence, like a correlation between two other variables — is a very small part of science.
The point I’m raising is independent of the example. “Looking for a correlation” is never the beginning of an enquiry, and, pace mukashi, is not necessarily a part of the enquiry. What is this Scientist really wanting to study? What is the best way to study that?
I work with biologists who study plants, trying to work out how various things happen, such as the development of leaf shapes, or the development of the different organs of flowers, or the process of building cell walls out of cellulose fibrils. Whatever correlations they might from time to time measure, that is subordinate to questions of what genes are being expressed where, and how biological structures get assembled.
That may be the case, but I think that is peripheral to the point of this post. If for some reason I wanted to find out the value of a variable (and this variable could be anything, including a correlation), how would I go about doing it.
I am taking the point of the post to be as indicated in the title and the lead: creating a model for doing Empirical Science. Finding out the value of a variable — especially one with no physical existence, like a correlation between two other variables — is a very small part of science.