Monday, June 13, 2011
A Skillful Spatial Thinker at Work
In creating maps of the seafloor, Marie Tharp epitomizes the skillful spatial thinker at work. We can see many of the dimensions of skilled performance. In doing so, it is prominent to reemphasize the extent to which she worked with little technological support. Many of the tasks that she undertook with paper and pencil would today be supported by technology. A skilled spatial thinker is capable of detecting spatial patterns and regularities from a sparse, discontinuous, and error-laden data set. Even today, it would he a challenge for a geoscientist, knowledgeable about the processes that shape seafloor morphology, to generate sensible seafloor contours from the scattered ship tracks that Tharp had available. A skilled spatial thinker can depict and explicate spatial facts despite noisy, ugly data. Tharp undoubtedly saw through the masses of side echoes and sailing errors in her data set. Part of her success is a reflection of someone else component of spatial thinking. She could shift undoubtedly hack and forth among different vantage points and representations of spatial data. Tharp's maw data were profiles; her intermediate products were fines of tiny handwritten numbers; and her final products were maps and paintings.
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