Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)

Re:Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them ... by lutorm on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @04:28PM (#627448)

That's part of a film called "The private universe" (http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html) about how students can learn stuff in class and then promptly revert to their nonscientific understanding unless they are forced to really confront their prior knowledge in light of what they are being taught. It's a fascinating film.

The importance of explicitly confronting prior knowledge and integrating it into learning is one of the basic principles of learning that came out of the "How People Learn" studies (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6160).

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Re:Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them ... by stcredzero on Tuesday May 26, 2009 @04:47PM (#627478)

Thanks for the link. I was wondering where that clip was from. Reminds me of Feynman's bit from his time teaching in Brazil. The students there could stand up in class and recite the textbook description of Polarized Light, but when asked to identify it in the real world in the view out the window, couldn't. (The definition mentioned the example of reflected light, and there was sunlight playing off of water in the bay.)

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