A couple of weeks ago, somebody I know took a basic civil-service type math test as part of a local government job application. Maybe fifty candidates were seated at desks in an auditorium. Before the test began, the instruction page explained how to answer a sample question, which happened to involve multiplying two negative numbers. One jobseeker looked at the sample question with surprise, and whispered to the guy sitting next to him: “Multiply a negative and a negative? Can you even do that?”
I’m all for optimizing the educational experience of the most talented students. But “high-school math education” implies math education for the bottom half of the bell curve as well. I’d agree with the original post, as long as its understood that, for most students, we’re talking about very, very basic probability and statistics. The difference between the Bayesian and frequentist approach isn’t even on the table.
A couple of weeks ago, somebody I know took a basic civil-service type math test as part of a local government job application. Maybe fifty candidates were seated at desks in an auditorium. Before the test began, the instruction page explained how to answer a sample question, which happened to involve multiplying two negative numbers. One jobseeker looked at the sample question with surprise, and whispered to the guy sitting next to him: “Multiply a negative and a negative? Can you even do that?”
I’m all for optimizing the educational experience of the most talented students. But “high-school math education” implies math education for the bottom half of the bell curve as well. I’d agree with the original post, as long as its understood that, for most students, we’re talking about very, very basic probability and statistics. The difference between the Bayesian and frequentist approach isn’t even on the table.