astronomy

Michael Scaife

Michael Scaife is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Michael Scaife rather than just read about it. In short: Michael Scaife (24 March 1948 – 18 December 2001) was a British biologist, psychologist, and reader at the University of Sussex, known for his early work in developmental psychology and his later interdisciplinary study in cognitive and computing sciences. Biography Born in Lincolnshire and raised in Coventry, Scaife attended the King Henry VIII grammar school on a scholarship, and obtained his MA in biology at Univ…

Key takeaways

Michael Scaife belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Michael Scaife to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Michael Scaife from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Michael Scaife (24 March 1948 – 18 December 2001) was a British biologist, psychologist, and reader at the University of Sussex, known for his early work in developmental psychology and his later interdisciplinary study in cognitive and computing sciences.

Biography Born in Lincolnshire and raised in Coventry, Scaife attended the King Henry VIII grammar school on a scholarship, and obtained his MA in biology at University of Liverpool, and his PhD in psychology at University of Oxford. Scaife started his academic career as research assistant at the ethology group of the University of Oxford, where he cooperated with Mike Cullen, Nikolaas Tinbergen and Richard Dawkins. Later in the 1970s at University of Oxford he participated in the education and cognition research group of Jerome Bruner, with whom he published the article "The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant" in Nature in 1975. According to Bruner and Clark their cooperation helped "revolutionise the study of the infant mind. The target was to unravel what was involved in a child's learning to master a culture and the technology it generates. Mike knew that this problem was all about interactions. He saw that spectators could never get to the gist of things. It was through interacting that you learned how to do things - and also what needed doing." Later in the 1980s he moved to the University of Sussex, where he became senior lecturer in 1999, and reader in 2001. In 1987 at Sussex University he had co-founded the school of cognitive and computing sciences. Also with his partner Yvonne Rogers he founded the Interact Lab to study representation in problem solving.

Selected publications

Books Butterworth, George, Julie Rutkowska, and Michael Scaife. Evolution and developmental psychology. Vol. 4. Harvester, 1985.

Articles Scaife, Michael, and Jerome S. Bruner. "The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant." Nature (1975). Scaife, Mike, and Yvonne Rogers. "External cognition: how do graphical representations work?." International journal of human-computer studies 45.2 (1996): 185–213. Scaife, M., Rogers, Y., Aldrich, F., & Davies, M. (1997, March). "Designing for or designing with? Informant design for interactive learning environments." In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 343–350). ACM. Navarro-Prieto, Raquel, Mike Scaife, and Yvonne Rogers. "Cognitive strategies in web searching." Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Human Factors & the Web. 1999. Cheng, Peter C-H., Ric K. Lowe, and Mike Scaife. "Cognitive science approaches to understanding diagrammatic representations." Artificial Intelligence Review 15.1-2 (2001): 79–94.

References

External links Obituary: Michael Scaife, The Guardian

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Michael Scaife

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Michael Scaife claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Michael Scaife before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Michael Scaife ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Michael Scaife

In research: Michael Scaife appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Michael Scaife in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Michael Scaife is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1948 births, 2001 deaths, 20th-century British psychologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Michael Scaife outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Michael Scaife in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Michael Scaife means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Michael Scaife out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Michael Scaife in simple terms?

Why does Michael Scaife matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Michael Scaife?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Michael Scaife.