It was super interesting to learn about the differences between certain words that, outside of GISci/geography/mathematics, are often equivalent, like vagueness, ambiguity, etc. Knowing more about McEachern’s methodology would have definitely been helpful, but I’m looking forward to hearing more in Cameron’s talk!
I thought it was weird that their central argument about uncertainty was with 6 floodplain mappers in a focus group. I would think that a focus group would be an interesting setting, since people can change their minds or omit what they were thinking due to contributions from another, or from the impostor syndrome, or both. Also, 6 people is not really enough to test a theory. Roth argues that it was negligible since the 6 were experts, but I would have liked to hear more about what actually made them experts, if they actually used any of these steps outlined by McEachern to reduce uncertainty, and also I would have been interested in why Roth actually considers this small (thus biased) subset of GIScientists as negligible.
Also, does anyone actually use this methodology in determining/reducing uncertainty? I have never heard of it before, which is worrisome considering many do not take further GIS courses beyond the intro classes. I thought it was interesting that one of the respondents said that representing uncertainty on their final products brought skepticism about their actual skills by their clients. It is a real issue, but also, people need to know that these maps aren’t always truthful — even as much as the map producer has tried — because of the fundamental multitude of issues of representing all the data accurately, from data collection to 2D/3D representation. So, though these experts lamented the concept of explaining this to laymen, would it really be that difficult to explain, especially considering the long-lasting benefits of the educational experience?