Bark River Northstar, first impressions.

knifetester said:
I have attended some of the best universities in the nation and some of lowest tiered.

Education is what you make of it, and in most cases takes a back seat to common sense anyways.

The my PhD is worth more than your PhD game seems a bit silly to me.
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I don't think I can put enough :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: in here!
 
Hmmm...I got my B.S. at #96 on the list, my Ph.D. at #34. Does this mean that I think I know more than Cliff (or anyone else on this forum) about knives? Certainly not, and you would be hard pressed to name anyone who got a Ph.D. in cutlery science from an accredited program. One of the most important things to learn in grad school is how much you really don't know. I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. Beyond that, I can at least listen to other people's discourse on any subject. I may not necessarily believe it, but I can at least be civil about it. And civility is sometimes lacking on public forums.

I can even accept that other knife users get different results than I do with their knife testing. There are enough variables - heat treat of the individual knife, sharpening angles and grits, and how the user actually cuts - to make it far from an exact science. And I have seen enough instances of an experiment that was repeated and yielded a different result to know that some times we just can't come up with a logical explanation.
 
Read the methodology used by cybermetrics, I dont think it is very indicative of university quality. You dont have to have PhD in statistics to know that their measures are likely to be suspect.
 
davmgt said:
Read the methodology used by cybermetrics, I dont think it is very indicative of university quality. You dont have to have PhD in statistics to know that their measures are likely to be suspect.
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So what do you think about your North Star's?
Came sharp as h#@l, right?
Have you enjoyed the handles?
Did any of yours come with pronounced handle taper?
Have you used the "bushcraft" point to drill?
Any need to actually sharpen yet or still able to keep up with stropping?
Goina' get an Aurora? (Got mine. :thumbup: )

(My reaction in Post 69 to [ir]relevance of citation of Cybermetrics: "whatever they're measuring." :rolleyes: )
 
I have a Northstar, but somehow always find myself reaching for my Highland. It has always been my favorite Bark River--perhaps until I get an Aurora!
 
lambertiana said:
... and you would be hard pressed to name anyone who got a Ph.D. in cutlery science from an accredited program.
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Engineers have specialized in cutlery, both on steels as well as issues of sharpness, cutting ability, etc., FuriTech for example was founded by such an engineer. There are also enginners who study issues in a general sense, ergonomics for example. Other individuals who have devoted considerable time for research after getting degrees in related (and as is often the case, not so related) fields, Verhoeven for example. Though it is a very uncommon field of research compared to most as you noted.

The above is just a logical continuation of a series of very silly attacks which started years ago. The first was "I was not a real scientist" because I was just a student when I started doing the reviews. At the time I had published peer reviewed papers, had taught at the university level but was still "just a student". Later after I graduated, eventually with a PhD, it was then argued a PhD in physics doesn't mean anything when it comes to discussing how knives work (obviously there is no physics in metallurgy or engineering in general). Ironically one of the common complaints was the lack of "scientific" nature of my work when this was actually a large part of my MSc and PhD thesis as I focused on data analysis methods, in particular how to handle data prone to large variance with lots of variables (sound familiar).

And now it is "Well ok, he may have a phd, and it may be related to an understanding of knives and steel but it doesn't come from a good enough university." This is pretty silly, I don't recall ever seeing "Your universtity must be at least this high ---" outside of any conference or as part of a selection rule for publication.

My favorite type of ad hominem attacks though are the ones which cover both sides at once such as :

"Cliff uses his knives too hard and thus his reviews are unrealistic."

"Cliff doesn't use his knives hard enough and thus his viewpoints are unrealistic."

You can find both of these in various threads often by the same people at different times. Kind of hard to please those people. Other common ones are "too much scientific work" and then "too much field work". My personal favorite has always been "Never admits he has been wrong" coupled with "Isn't a credible source of information because he admits he has been wrong."

From what I can figure, I need to never have been wrong while admitting I was wrong whenever I disagreed with those individuals, have all the work quantitative but subjective at the same time, and use knives extremely heavily to show the relevance of insane sabre ground tactical profiles but only do so with extremely light precision cutting. I have not quite worked that out yet.

As always, never take ad hominem attacks seriously, they are a direct admission that the individual has no facts or logic to support his arguement. If it amuses you to point out the unreasonable nature of the statements then by all means do so but never sink to the level of the poster who is making the generalizations because that is what they want. They very much would find it ideal if everyone was in the mud becuase they are there already and since they know they can't win their goal is to make everyone else fail.

-Cliff
 
Cliff Stamp said:
a large part of my MSc and PhD thesis as I focused on data analysis methods, in particular how to handle data prone to large variance with lots of variables (sound familiar).

-Cliff
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Cool! I have always been a bit of a stats nerd. (my minor area in my doctorate was stats)
 
The first conference I attended I was just after developing some methods for nonlinear fitting on my own as an undergrad from basic principles of minimizing deviations. I spoke afterwards to an individual who had devoted a large part of his research into such areas in detail including effects such as rounding of presented parameters and how the correlations between the parameters had to be taken into account when rounding. It really opened my eyes to the depth of the field. Many very simple questions have very involved answers and there are many different approaches taken.

-Cliff
 
That is interesting Cliff. I am really interested in nonparametric methods--the Central Limit Theorem doesnt always hold, especially when dealing with humans and organizations (my two areas of research). i am in the process of developing a SAS program to bootstrap a small sample of data from the recording industry. Have you ever used Cox or Kaplan Meir hazard models in your knife tests? It wouldbe cool to develop models predicting the hazard of breakage, bending, chipping, etc.. given certain types of use. I imagine the challenge would involve sampling issues.
 
davmgt said:
I imagine the challenge would involve sampling issues.
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Indeed, I am now developing meta-reviews which will deal with such issues. Those will be discussions of the reviews written on the knives, by myself and others, looking for trends and modeling them accordingly. This will cover durability and failure issues as well as trends in ergonomics as well as other issues such as for example the relationship between physical size and blade size for a given task. Many of these correlations seem to be obvious but it would be interesting to see if they are actually well supported by the actual data. There is indeed a wealth of statistical methods which can be applied. It would be useful to have access to the complete defect report rate, but publically on all forums, email and as well as manufacturer interaction but this is unlikely. However a partial sample is better than no sample.

-Cliff
 
hey Pyromancer! Fancy seeing you here!

Cheers man!

Ron LaBella
 
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