I am working with some colleagues on a large proposal to the National Science Foundation. Every once in a while, I need to stop word-smithing, and instead explain what we are doing by making a diagram.<\/p>\n
I know that that’s supposed to be work, but there is something just so darned fun about explaining things in pictures. It feels less like work and more like play — sort of the grown-up equivalent of a kid getting to color with crayons in school.<\/p>\n
I think that this is because when you make a diagram, you aren’t just communicating ideas. You are also communicating, in a visceral way, how those ideas relate to one another. The physical arrangement of the components of your diagram is itself an important part of the story.<\/p>\n
Words are amazing — they are our human super power — but sometimes a well-designed diagram gives the sense<\/i> of things, in a way that words could not. And maybe that’s why the part of proposal writing where we make diagrams is so much fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am working with some colleagues on a large proposal to the National Science Foundation. Every once in a while, I need to stop word-smithing, and instead explain what we are doing by making a diagram. I know that that’s supposed to be work, but there is something just so darned fun about explaining things … Continue reading “Making diagrams”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25279"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25280,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25279\/revisions\/25280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}