Abstract
If you were watching the world of science in 1835, you would be fairly certain of one thing: we would never know what stars are made of. By that time scientists had discovered that the stars were quite far away and they could not imagine any technology that would take humans from this planet to those places and back again. Then one day, Robert Bunsen (of the burner) and his colleague Gustav Kirchhoff noticed that when elements were placed in a hot fire, the light they emitted proved to have a signature distribution of color on the spectrum. A spectrograph observation of burning helium looks different, uniquely and reliably, than one of burning nitrogen. In the instant of discovery, the two scientists had learned how to sample the stars.
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Notes
- 1.
Not only that, but in the effort to sample a star’s materials, a scientist would almost certainly suffer burned fingers.
- 2.
http://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/tools/tools-spectroscopy.htm, observed January 31, 2012.
- 3.
We acknowledge that there are also theoretical tools in science, but we are limiting our discussion of tools to research tools.
- 4.
See (Mishra 2007) for a lengthy discussion of different production functions in the context of the history of economic thought. Much more complex production functions are possible, but we eschew deeper discussion in the interest of clarity of presentation.
- 5.
This is easily shown by setting \( 2f({L}_{1},K)=f({L}_{2}K)\)and solving for the ratio of L 2 to L 1, which will be strictly greater than 2. For a discussion of these properties, including an concise introduction to production theory in economics and the properties of the Cobb-Douglas function, in particular, see Mas-Collel et al. (1995, Ch. 5).
- 6.
For more information, start at the appropriate forum: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/2626217/
- 7.
The item level of a weapon or piece of armor is internally assigned by Blizzard and strongly correlates with the quantity of stats – such as strength or intelligence – with which the item imbues its bearer.
- 8.
Our estimates were invariant to aggregations of larger numbers of guild players, including measures based on the top 40 and top 50 contributors in the guild.
- 9.
Indeed, this could be a point of criticism for our claim that guilds maximize fun only through boss kills. It looks as if, once a raiding dungeon’s final boss is defeated, guild members like to have entertaining alternatives to raiding. Again, however, we appeal to our sample selection and to the time period under examination. Until the final boss is completed, boss kills are the only focus of the guild.
- 10.
This is a hypothesis we will test in the next iteration of this study, for which the sample is much larger.
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About the Authors
Isaac Knowles is a PhD student in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University. His work focuses on the structure, regulation, and measurement of virtual economic activities and their relationship with the real economy. He received his BS in economics from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 2007 and his MS in economics from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 2012. He has also worked as an economic research analyst at the US Federal Trade Commission.
Travis Ross is a PhD candidate in Telecommunications and Cognitive Science at Indiana University. His interests include the role of media in the formation of social norms, institutions, game mechanics, and using games as tools for social science experimentation. His recent research has investigated the role of cognitive heuristics in decision-making, and the influence of game design and social influence on individual attitudes, beliefs, and ultimately behavior.
Edward Castronova is a Professor of Telecommunications and Cognitive Science, Indiana University. Castronova (PhD Economics, Wisconsin, 1991) is a founder of scholarly online game studies and an expert on the societies of virtual worlds. Among his academic publications on these topics are two books: Synthetic Worlds (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Exodus to the Virtual World (Palgrave, 2007). Professor Castronova teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the design of games, the game industry, and the management of virtual societies. Outside his academic work, Professor Castronova makes regular appearances in mainstream media (60 min, the New York Times, and The Economist), gives keynotes at major conferences (Austin Game Conference, Digital Games Research Association Conference, Interactive Software Federation of Europe), and consults for business (McKinsey, Vivendi, Forrester).
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Castronova, E., Ross, T.L., Knowles, I. (2013). Designer, Analyst, Tinker: How Game Analytics Will Contribute to Science. In: Seif El-Nasr, M., Drachen, A., Canossa, A. (eds) Game Analytics. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4769-5_29
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