'Is it time to teach uncertainty in schools?' blog discussion

adaadat

Surely, to stop the constant fretting regarding whether children understand this or that, what is needed is a decent education system, not one that languishes in 25th position, internationally? Martin won't achieve this, though, by using such a word as "progressive" in the blog article, as this is what has produced the catastrophic situation we have now.

We're meant to believe, by the last lot in power, that when, between 2000 and 2009, 15-year-olds plummeted from 4th to 16th, in 'Science', 7th to 25th, in 'Reading' and 8th to 28th, in 'Maths', it owed more to the rest of the world discovering the magic formula for a successful education system, than the wholesale dumbing down of subjects, their marking and their examination.

Ask yourself why, in order to increase the percentage of 18-year-olds who receive a university education, universities have struggled to find suitable candidates, resorting instead to those who wouldn't normally qualify, creating another disastrous education situation, where 20% of British students (of all British students in uni right now) have no better than 2 "E"s at "A"-level and 25,000 of the 2008 - 2010 intake don't have any "A"-levels. Our once world class universities have been 'comprehensivised'.

It was an interesting article, but, as with all of Martin's pontificating on how to improve the education of our children, he completely missed the central point: children don't need to be taught that "maybe" can be found between "yes" and "no", but given a decent education, like foreign children receive, so they understand it as a matter of course.

Glowboy

A real-life example...

Six years ago we moved house. The base rate at the time was something like 3% which was well below the long-term mean. I fixed our mortgage for ten years. My reasoning was that money was tight and I didn't want to be exposed to an increase, plus the potential downside was no more than 3% and the upside considerably more (remembering interest rates went to something like 15% not that many years previously).

It doesn't look such a smart move now: it's very likely that by the end of the 10 years we'd have been much better off on the lender's SVR. But I still think it was the right decision based on the information available at the time.

hpuse

I would look at the brightside rather...

Consider you were on a rented accomodation.
10 years is a good time window to be making a profit of upto 40% on the investment you made on the house no matter you paid 3% or 7% of interest.

Fact:
Life does not run on risk by default, where as businesses run on risks, and if they are calculated risks - you have a way to get out of it.
People often get confused by the using the term 'risk' interchangeably in both business and life, infact the author of the blog himself proves that beyond doubt.

Buy a house to live - and your life not at risk and no uncertainity by anymeans.
Buy a house to make money - of course "your business" is at risk !.

How would you teach someone to differentiate the same in schools ?


HP.

Glowboy wrote: »

A real-life example...

Six years ago we moved house. The base rate at the time was something like 3% which was well below the long-term mean. I fixed our mortgage for ten years. My reasoning was that money was tight and I didn't want to be exposed to an increase, plus the potential downside was no more than 3% and the upside considerably more (remembering interest rates went to something like 15% not that many years previously).

It doesn't look such a smart move now: it's very likely that by the end of the 10 years we'd have been much better off on the lender's SVR. But I still think it was the right decision based on the information available at the time.

Byngdesign

Along with uncertainty, perhaps include worst case analysis, which is normally very neglected. In maths everything has an exact answer, if it can be solved at all, but in engineering everything has a tolerance, and many just don't understand how these tolerances impact on the results. If you apply the same thing to life in general, it's usually the case that the tolerances are less well defined, leading to greater levels of unpredictability. Once you understand that, and use it, you'll have an easier ride.

Most people understand this intuitively at a basic level - it's what makes Mr. Spock in Star Trek such an interesting character - he simply can't be that accurate!

pixwix

rdr wrote: »

One of the hard things about being an aethesit bringing up kids is not having "god's will" to fall back on when discussing uncerainty.

...the worst thing about being an atheist is the rubbish holidays....:D:D:D

culpepper

Much better to teach lateral thinking in my opinion.
To be able to evaluate alternatives and decide on several choices.
I think basic programming helped there with the If,Then,Else branches.
Chess also has that sort of branched reasoning, you look at the board and see where the other party might change the play and try to keep a plan for each possibility.

So with the car/job scenario you must imagine the various scenarios
A.Borrow money and obtain car to get job ,repay loan out of future wages becomes
(Is job guaranteed if you have car?)
IF yes THEN borrow money to buy car ELSE get lift/taxi /borrow car to get interview and THEN IF job gained,borrow money to buy car ELSE return car and CONTINUE looking for job.
B.Car share with another employee or part journey share with a neighbour who passes the area . Kids to use local authority school transport as they live more than 3 miles away.
C.As above but lower your sights and buy a motor scooter for getting there which should be less money to borrow.

Really a lot of people expect answers that are clear cut and rely on other people to do their decision making for them. That is just mental laziness and I think we have been conditioned to BE mentally lazy because it suits those in authority who want compliance.(she says sounding like an Anarchist):rotfl:

savingholmes

I like your question

I provide support to people who are in the process of losing their job - and routinely say to them - "we would all like the scroll to come down from heaven and tell us which way to go - but life's not like that. We can only make the best decision we know how on the basis of what we know today. Its exactly the same with the decision that you and others made that led to the current funding crisis and your job being put at risk - they made the best decision they knew how at the time and hoped it would never come to this...." then I talk to them about the fact that "we are where we are and all we can do is try to create a positive outcome for ourselves and go forward from here... I then ask them to focus on what their ideal job looks like to help them recognise it when it comes along...."

I definitely think this approach helps them come to terms with a nightmarish situation - and wish I'd learned it myself much earlier in life - it would have saved years of heartache.

hc25036

I used to work in drug development and for 3 years we had trainee medics come to us to learn about how drugs are tested - a big part of which is assessing risk. To give them some concepts, I had a list of possible events (chance of winning the lottery with a single ticket, chance of being injured in a car crash in a year, risk of being in a train crash, risk of being hit by lightning, stuff like that plus some medical events) and asked them to identify the 3 most likely and the three most likely.

In the three years we had more than a dozen very bright medical students spend time with us and not one got more than 2 out of 6 right. In general we are very bad at assessing risk in every day events....

TomJ

MSE_Martin wrote: »

One of my favourite phrases relating to all this is "don't confuse correlation with causation".