On the subject in the title: Books and papers worth reading that are not about this at all Working notes rather than a conclusion.
Reading back through what has been written here about books and papers, three questions come up every time and only one has ever been answered properly.
Listing all three, with what I think the state of the answer is for each, so the thread can start further along than the last one did.
Lounge-appropriate observation. I have started reading the certificates that come with things I buy that have nothing to do with any of this, and the standard elsewhere is lower than I expected.
I would put a moderate confidence on that and no more.
Books and papers is a good example of a question where the honest answer is boring and the interesting answers are unsupported. I would go with boring.
Loosely related and not worth its own topic: the vocabulary here has leaked into how I read everything. I now notice when a press release gives a relative figure and no absolute one, which is most of the time.
What I want from this books and papers thread is the list of things that would need to be true for the claim to hold. If we can write that list, we can check it.
The thing about books and papers that took me longest to accept is that a plausible mechanism is not evidence of an effect. It is a reason to look, not a result.
Following this. I have the same question and no better information than the first post.
Lounge question, no agenda: does anyone else keep a physical notebook for this rather than a file? Mine is more use than anything I have typed, and I cannot entirely explain why.
That is all I can say without guessing.
A digression that keeps occurring to me: the most-linked documents here are the dullest ones. Nothing gets cited like the unit-arithmetic page.
The honest answer is that it depends, and here is what it depends on.
What I would check first on books and papers is whether the thing being measured moved or whether the way of measuring it moved. Those look identical in a graph.
A definition problem is doing most of the work in this books and papers discussion. Once the term is pinned down I suspect the disagreement mostly goes away and what is left is small.
Paper, same. I think it is that writing by hand is slow enough to make you decide what is worth recording.
That has held every time I have looked, which is not the same as always.
Practical experience of books and papers, offered as one case with the conditions stated, not as a general finding. Conditions first, because they are what make it interpretable.
Two sentences on books and papers and then I will stop, because the rest is speculation and the thread is better without mine.
What is documented is narrow. What is inferred from it is broad. The gap between them is where every argument here lives.
Thank you for the correction. I would rather find out here than later.
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