Hard science

Found an extraordinary exam question in a post called GCSEs are dumbed down and getting worse, by Cabalamat, taken from an actual physics exam (Edexcel GCSE Physics P1b reference 5010 taken on 9 November 2006) (via Ben Goldacre).

Our Moon seems to 'disappear' during an eclipse. Some people say this is because an old lady covers the Moon with her cloak. She does this so that thieves cannot steal the shiny coins on the surface.

Which of these would help scientists to prove or disprove this idea?

A - collect evidence from people who believe the lady sees the thieves
B - shout to the lady that the thieves are coming
C - send a probe to the Moon to search for coins
D - look for fingerprints

I have read this question several times, and I am still unsure what answer they are looking for.

A - Well, this is exactly the kind of thing that social scientists would probably do. The question doesn't specify what kind of scientists it is talking about.

B - Well, this is a good experimental approach. If shouting affected the outcome, and if shouting about thieves produced a significantly different outcome to shouting about other things, then this would be good evidence in support of the hypothesis. However, if shouting didn't affect the outcome, this wouldn't help to disprove the hypotheses because there is a vacuum between the Earth and the Moon and sound doesn't carry in a vacuum. The old lady might have cybertronic ears, but then again she might be deaf.

C - Finding or not finding coins doesn't really help us much. If there are coins, it could mean that the old lady has outwitted the thieves, or that the thieves thought it would be unlucky to take all the coins, or that there aren't any thieves. If there are no coins, it could mean we are looking in the wrong place, or it is the wrong time of the month, or Fred Goodwin's got them.

D - Fingerprints. Same as coins. By the way, are we looking for fingerprints on the coins, or fingerprints on the cloak?

I suspect that any child who really understands science and the scientific method will waste more time on this question than a child who hasn't a clue. So this isn't just dumbing down, it is levelling down.

Bart Simpson Effect

In an earlier post on the Red Queen Effect, I said that the Red Queen has now become an icon for a certain kind of energetic innovation - believing the impossible, accelerating and relentless change.

In his post Bart Simpson and Sun Tzu on Technology Strategy, the Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady identifies another paradoxical innovation strategy, which we could call the Bart Simpson effect.

In Episode 802 (production code 3F23) Bart Simpson has been placed in a remedial class for some reason. He spots a paradox. "Let me get this straight. We're behind the rest of our class and we're going to catch up to them by going slower than they are?"

Some of the greatest minds of all time were considered dull at school. Winston Churchill was not clever enough to do Latin, so he had to spend more time polishing his command of English instead. [Wikipedia: Churchill] And Albert Einstein was considered a slow learner. "He later credited his development of the theory of relativity to this slowness, saying that by pondering space and time later than most children, he was able to apply a more developed intellect." [Wikipedia: Einstein]

Perhaps there are some things you can only get when you do things slowly. Part of the problem with the school system is an obsession with speed. [See my previous piece Systems4Success]. Most parents fondly believe their children to be above average in intelligence, based on fluency, literacy, numeracy, for example an ability to follow the rules of school mathematics and solve average problems slightly faster than the other children [Wikipedia: Lake Wobegon Effect]. The dreamer who spends all day thinking deeply about a maths problem probably isn't going to get top marks at school. But mathematical genius is about depth rather than speed, wondering what happens when you change the rules.

Stephen points to the folly of trying to catch the competitors on their own terms. "For all of the bubble era or Web 2.0 talk of 'disruptive' technologies, you'd be surprised at just how many vendors we speak with who anticipate closing marketshare or other gaps by simply outexecuting or outperforming their competitors."

If everyone is trying to be bigger and faster, then why not try smaller and slower. If everyone is trying to be smarter, why not try wiser.

And break the rules.

Christopher Alexander as Teacher

I once had the privilege to observe Christopher Alexander teaching first-year students at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in London. Like any wise teacher, he spent more time listening than speaking. It was the end of the first term of the foundation year, and he asked them what they'd learned so far. They had apparently been exposed to an eclectic mixture of ideas and techniques. Many of them seemed unable to understand how it all fitted together, or where it might be leading, and a tone of dissatisfaction crept into the discussion. He encouraged them to speak. They answered his questions thoughtfully, although they may have wondered when the lecture was going to start. 

During a coffee break, some of the students apologized to him for the facilities. The room in which the seminar was held was a fine 18th century drawing room overlooking Regent's Park, but it was not ideal for holding a seminar. The seating was awkward and uncomfortable, you had to trip over people to get to the board, the lighting and ventilation were poor, there was traffic noise outside, and so on. Perhaps some of the negative feelings about the course were now being attached to the building. Perhaps some of them felt bad that the Institute couldn't provide better accommodation for such an eminent visitor. 

Alexander decided to set them a task: to design a new lecture room for the Institute, one in which they would be proud to entertain guest lecturers such as himself. They protested: they hadn't been taught to do proper design yet. In fact, that was one of their main complaints about the course so far, hadn't he been listening? 

Of course he had been listening. Patiently he pointed out to them how they could use the ideas and techniques they had been taught, and apply them to this design task. Observation, analysis, drawing, simple model-building, and so on. He integrated these components for the students, or better still, gave them the opportunity to integrate them for themselves, not through abstract theory but by embodying them in a practical task. 

Now that's what I call Education. 

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originally posted at http://www.veryard.com/books/alexander.htm

Christopher Alexander 1936-2022 (March 2022)

Further posts on ChristopherAlexander on my Architecture blog.