"Calculate the probability of rolling an 8 on three six-sided dice."
Such were the only instructions on a statistics quiz I was given today.
Walking out of statistics today, I asked myself again why my uni made statistics a requisite course for my major, political science. The best I could reason is that polls and graphs are important tools in the political arena. However, I did wonder what the specific relevance of being able to predict how many times an 8 could turn up if I threw down three dice was to anything political. I suppose I'd ask what good is learning a foreign language if I planned to simply be an architect, and so on.
Put very simply, what do you think is the best means of going about educating a person? I feel that many Western nations are concerned with the abstract and not with the practical when it comes to educating; you'll learn next to nothing about, say, fiscal responsibility, but you'll learn about the half-angle and double-angle formulae because heaven forbid you get attacked by a gang demanding trigonometry or your life.
I'd go for something slightly Socratic and slightly Platonic. Unquestionably, some are just better at maths than languages or art. These strengths should be cultivated from the start, rather than dumping the theoretical on children. Encouraging these strengths might lead to new ideas and breakthroughs in various disciplines. Of course, general education would be an option, and while this method might lead to exclusiveness and a narrower general knowledge, I don't find it any worse than the notion of the common test: your mark is based on how far away you are from that specific test's standard of perfection. In short, test abolishment comes with my method of intensive education.
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." --Plutarch
However, I did wonder what the specific relevance of being able to predict how many times an 8 could turn up if I threw down three dice was to anything political.
Questions involving dice are a classic method of teaching basic stats. The die is preferred because it's a familiar object that makes for a simple, concrete challenge that requires you to implement the basic math of stats and probability.
I would assume that understanding and applying stats is a rather important part of being a political scientist, so it follows quite logically that you would need to know a thing or two about stats if you want to be any good at it.
I suppose I'd ask what good is learning a foreign language if I planned to simply be an architect, and so on.
Before you can start designing buildings, you have to understand how they stay up, what they need to be made of, how to avoid water damage or plumbing failure, how to make sure they stay standing in an earthquake or windstorm. And before you can understand all that, you need to understand physics and chemistry. And before you can understand physics and chemistry, you need to understand math. So it would not be unreasonable to expect a few problems like this somewhere along the way to becoming an architect:
Quote:
Describe the large scale, or end behavior of the following polynomial where a, b, c, d, e, g, are all constants.
f(x) = -x6+ ax5 + bx4+ cx3+ dx2+ ex + g
It may not appear to have much to do with architecture, but you still need to know how to solve it if you want to understand architecture.
On Cyc's second point:
what's that have to do with foreign languages? O.o
...you guys make my brain hurt.....
what's that have to do with foreign languages?
They probably wouldn't make him learn a foreign language if he took architecture, because it has nothing to do with architecture or its prerequisites. But a probability question involving dice is quite relevant to stats, which is an important component of political science. The dice may not have, in and of themselves, a whole lot to do with politics, but they're a totally reasonable thing to include.
Depends on where you go, Cyc. My Uni requires 3 semesters of a foreign language. (I managed to FAIL the AP Spanish test, and still pass my Uni's language placement <<; Sad)
Depends on where you go, Cyc. My Uni requires 3 semesters of a foreign language.
Well, obviously you might very well end up having to learn a new language, but that's just the university's requirements. I'm just pointing out that the dice are important to stats, and stats are important to political science.
ah, got ya... My bad
