Getting to the point

I now have a data point to put on my poster I’m doing for the conference at the end of the month. Correction. That should be a “datum” point, because there is only one. Datum. Singular. Some people like to use a datum point to make all sorts of extravagant extrapolations about life, the universe, the Hadean, and all sorts of other underconstrained systems. I prefer a more conservative approach. So what I’m thinking, for this poster, is just that. I will have the title, at the top. Then my name (Dr. Lemming), and my institution. No references, no introduction, no annoying blocks of text that nobody ever reads. Just a huge, meter by meter white space, with a single point in the middle. I’ll add the appropriate axes, properly labeled, of course, but because it is just one measurement, there isn’t really any way that I can include statistical errors. So it will just be a single point, suspended in a sea of meaningless white, devoid of context.

Interpretation is what universities hire academics to produce. I’m a techo. I just measure the datum.