As someone who has done (some) teaching, I think this is absolutely correct. In fact, the most difficult thing I find about teaching is trying to find the student’s starting knowledge, and then working from there. If the teacher does not goes back enough ‘inferential steps’, the student won’t learn anything—or worse, they might think they know when they don’t.
Excellent stuff.
Huh, I guess I should have come here earlier…
I’m Lorenzo, 31, from Madrid, Spain (but I’m Italian). I’m an evolutionary psychologist, or try to be, working on my PhD. I’m also doing a Master’s Degree in Statistics, in which I discovered (almost by accident) the Bayesian approach. As someone with a longstanding interest in making psychology become a better science, I’ve found this blog a very good place for clarifying ideas.
I’ve been a follower of Less Wrong after reading Eliezer’s essays on Bayesian reasoning some 3-4 months ago. I’ve known the Bayes theorem for quite a long time, but little or nothing about the bayesian approach to propability theory. The frecuentist paradigm dominates much of psychology, which is a shame, because I think bayesian reasoning is much better suited to the study of mind. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about what a bayesian approach entails, at least in this part of the world. Oh, well. We’ll deal with it.
Thanks and keep up the good work!