For years, I’ve been teaching a fake graph. In pretty much every course I teach, on some day when students seem discouraged or distracted, I’ll draw an X axis labeled “Experience” and a Y-axis labeled “Confidence,” and sketch out the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” curve, as preparation for an informal pep talk. (Update, 27 Nov 2021: My…
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According to an article in Medium, toilet paper isn’t selling out because the supply chain is collapsing, or because people are hoarding. We’re using more toilet paper at home. Yes, some people are hoarding, but we’re all spending a lot more time at home. All the toilet paper we would have used at work, in…
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Other than one trip to the grocery store, I haven’t been in public since March 13, so I haven’t noticed if people in my community have started wearing masks. But I’ve wondered how I’ll be able to respond to people’s voices when I can’t see their mouths. In the past few years, I have…
A few interesting bits I found interesting to explore: There are two different ways to view the exact same data: The logarithmic scale shows a great comparison of the magnitude of growth between countries, but less of the human impact. The linear scale shows the real human impact — a growth twice the size is twice the number of…
My weekend coronavirus lockdown project was writing up a new handout devoted to Graham’s “Disagreement Hierarchy” for academic arguments. Does the word “argument” make you think of angry people yelling? This document presents Graham’s “disagreement hierarchy,” which catalogs multiple stages between juvenile name-calling and carefully refuting an error in your opponent’s central point. Siblings might…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After a member of a landing party dies an accidental, senseless death, Picard must break the news to her young son. “Jeremy, on the starship Enterprise, no one is alone,” says Picard. “No one.” Numerous times on my rewatch, I’ve wished episodes would devote less time to scanning and probing…
Public officials misspeak all the time. Journalists make mistakes all the time. Ordinary citizens over-react to headlines without reading the full article all the time. We are all of us human. It’s unfair for any of us to treat every gaffe as evidence of malice or incompetence. For example, critics of President Trump are stretching…
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