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Peter
Posts:
15
Registered:
12/6/04
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Critique of knowledge, pro skills opinion.
Posted:
Apr 14, 2006 12:32 PM
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I hope you don't mind some late night thoughts on this.
What I take away from my own training is that basic maths such as
adding and subtracting or multiplying and dividing when done
repeatedly and in a new way such as matrix work in college show that
basic skills can be extended. Personally I am weak at the knowledge
in advanced maths having left advanced maths for years at a time but
my basic skills still pull me along so I succeed in applied
statistics but not theoretical. The knowledge such as Navy knowledge
in my case knowledge of consumer tasks such as buying and advertising
would I think allow someone with the basic skills of working with
numbers to then learn the applied problems. I don't want to say more
about military maths because I am anti-war. But I also want to point
out the big sell of computer companies and software sales firms for
the term knowledge. This affects statistics education where we are
trained at advanced levels to think critically of helping the social
scientists with their statistics which they need help with but in
other courses we are taught to build complex models in probability
and knowledge searching that aid business improvement processes, i.e
managing to get the most out of underpaid workers by recording and
timing work tasks and driving for efficiency. I am a little off topic
here but back to knowledge searching as a paradigm of the computer
age and thus as an agenda for educational reform. I think I am being
over the top here but I hope you are aware that advanced computer and
statistics is seeking to manage, find, and discover, knowledge
rather than impart it to others.
I also just read some math education papers from Europe about
concepts and the fact that both teachers and students can make big
mistakes when they pervert math concepts. In my marking of regular
university students as a teaching assistant I mark for correct method
rather than correct skills meaning basic maths. Your final answer can
be off but if you used the right formulas and so forth and did
correct reasoning with your wrong result you still can score A. The
skills taught in university are more problem solving and decision
making skills. We try to let the students learn techniques and when
to use which technique and reasons for statistical methodology
decisions.
I am sorry I can add more in the adult education field but I am
mostly working elsewhere these days.
Peter Timusk,
B.Math statistics, B.A. legal studies
M.A. legal studies applicant
just trying to stay linear.
Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.
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