{"id":364,"date":"2007-04-02T22:58:59","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T20:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/?p=364"},"modified":"2007-04-18T09:43:38","modified_gmt":"2007-04-18T07:43:38","slug":"absolute-relative-and-perceived-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/?p=364","title":{"rendered":"Absolute, relative, and perceived knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and than I happily realize that my absolute level of knowledge K<sub>abs<\/sub> in my field of work steadily increases.<\/p>\n<p>One can define the relative knowledge K<sub>rel<\/sub> as the ratio of one&#8217;s absolute knowledge to the total available knowledge K<sub>tot<\/sub> in the respective field:<\/p>\n<p>K<sub>rel<\/sub>=K<sub>abs<\/sub>\/K<sub>tot<\/sub><\/p>\n<p>If the temporal development of K<sub>tot<\/sub> is neglected in a zero-order approximation, one&#8217;s own relative knowledge will rise with the increase of one&#8217;s own absolute knowledge. This increase usually comes naturally with working on some topic, as exemplified by my introductory remark.<br \/>\nHowever, the objective quantity K<sub>rel<\/sub> is of little relevance to any one individual, as one usually is not aware of the total knowledge K<sub>tot<\/sub>.<!--more--> Rather, one is only aware of the perceived total knowledge K<sub>tot<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup>, a quantity that will also increase during one&#8217;s occupation with the respective subject. Therefore, the decisive quantity will be the perceived relative knowledge<\/p>\n<p>K<sub>rel<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup>=K<sub>abs<\/sub>\/K<sub>tot<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The temporal progression of K<sub>rel<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup> during one&#8217;s occupation in a field of work would certainly be interesting to study. The question arises if the perceived amount of total knowledge available rises in the same manner as the the level of absolute personal knowledge in the field. Partly based on my own experience I would conjecture the following three regimes in the progression of K<sub>rel<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>A strong increase in the beginning of one&#8217;s occupation with the topic, when the basics are learned fast.<\/li>\n<li>A pronounced decline, when the personal absolute knowledge still increases but is by far outweighted by the realization of the huge amounts of knowledge available &#8220;out there&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>A rather moderate increase, with an asymptotic approach to unity, i.e. the personal absolute knowledge slowly becomes close to equal to the perceived total knowledge. This will happen when one starts to really master his field of work, and in this case K<sub>tot<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup> might even reach K<sub>tot<\/sub>, also implying that the perceived relative knowledge K<sub>rel<\/sub><sup>*<\/sup> will coincide with the objective relative knowledge K<sub>rel<\/sub>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Of course everything becomes even more complicated when the temporal evolution of the total knowledge is taken into account. In this case the question will be if the personal level of knowledge can keep up with the ongoing increase in total knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and than I happily realize that my absolute level of knowledge Kabs in my field of work steadily increases. One can define the relative knowledge Krel as the ratio of one&#8217;s absolute knowledge to the total available knowledge Ktot in the respective field: Krel=Kabs\/Ktot If the temporal development of Ktot is neglected in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-uni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arf1.de\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}