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Context for this filter:

    • LEARNING GOALS

      • B. CONCEPT ACQUISITION
        • Techniques for validating instruments:  
          • a. Interactive exploration: Testing an instrument by changing the thing it is measuring in ways you know through other means, and seeing if the instrument recognizes the changes appropriately (e.g. does driving increase a car's odometer; see how singing higher and lower notes affects a sound spectrograph; sprayable electrons in Hacking reading).  
          • b. Comparison of multiple instruments (e.g. thermometers)  
          • c. Comparison to direct observation (e.g. naked sight compared to sight with a magnifying glass)  
      • C. CONCEPT APPLICATION
        • Identify when and how interactive exploration, comparison of multiple instruments, and comparison to direct observation can be used to validate instruments.  
        • Identify cases in which instrumentation is needed to solve problems (e.g. entities/events are too slow, too fast, too small — that is, those for which we cannot rely on our everyday senses and cognitive capacities), especially in policy contexts.  
        • Explain how our ability to use the techniques for validating an instrument above can lead to more/less confidence in a given measurement.