Science literacy: how confident are you?

[nottsgirl]

Technical, yes. And properties of the immune system's response to the virus.

I think the y axis is showing what percentage of the total amount of binding by antibodies in the sera could be attributed to binding to each variant. I'm not sure whether that total is within, or between people, though. Or whether I'm correct!

The y axis on the right is something about neutralising 50% of the virus but I don't know what the numbers are.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I would severely doubt that anyone fails a subject because they, the learner are at fault.

I disagree but only as far as saying that if the learner wishes to learn and does not have other restrictions on learning then a question has to be asked about the teaching.

If you have a student who is only on your course because otherwise their benefits are cut off (dole or mum and dad) and turns up to every class so blazed they vane even talk to you when ask them a question i think it's ok to say the learner is at fault.

Not to say they can't learn just a more holistic approach may be needed.

I dunno. Am I out of touch or is it the children who are wrong?

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Sorry off topic and slightly mean.


It's just when your measured on outcome and are already bending so far backwards for someone it looks like your going for a German suplex it makes you sparky a bit

Or maybe thats just me.

Blah

 

[RedRedRose]

Science: the only questions I can never answer on mastermind*

Got to 40 mainly being a humanities guy, but just started an environmental-related course at university.

* Except questions on anatomy

 

[Mation]

Science: the only questions I can never answer on mastermind*

Got to 40 mainly being a humanities guy, but just started an environmental-related course at university.

* Except questions on anatomy

Isn't that less about ability, though, and more about what you've previously studied/been taught in a way that works and sparks your interest?

What made anatomy an exception?

 

[Knotted]

On maths: I would prefer to call it “constructed” rather than “invented”. Arguably, all knowledge is constructed, and I don’t see maths as having a privileged position in that. For a start, knowledge is located within a particular context that gives it meaning. That context includes a cultural understanding of what the purpose of the knowledge is. Maths is no different in this regard.

Mostly, I view it a bit like language. Languages are constructs but there is something in their construction that enables thought. Maths is a construct that enables thought to be developed about the patterns of the universe. I think there is a difference between the patterns and the construct we use to understand those, though. The way we understand the patterns depends on the nature of the construct, for example.

I think the word "context" can be overused. The word itself is highly context sensitive! The abstractions of pure mathematics often don't have much in the way of reference to the empirical world. Going back to non-Euclidean geometry, it was developed by throwing out one of Euclid's unproven postulates. This was something there had been centuries of attempts at proving. It's only later that you get a meaning derived from physics (a context if you like). The engine driving the mathematical development was about looking at axioms and propositions derived from them.

Mathematics often looks more like a game of logic than knowledge as such. Sure it's constructed (although that has a specific meaning in the philosophy of mathematics). However I would suggest that mathematical knowledge is more know-how than know-about.

 

[kabbes]

Also, “general knowledge” quizzes are ridiculous, if you take a step back from them. It’s anything but general knowledge. If you programmed a computer to randomly set questions based on the entire domain of human knowledge (even all human knowledge not requiring degree-level study), nobody would be able to answer even 1% of the questions. The reason that general knowledge quizzes work is because there is a cultural agreement about what domains of human knowledge are in scope, what kind of information is acceptable to be included and the form that asking about that that information will take. As such, what’s really being tested is the degree of cultural affiliation between the question setters and the person answering. This is particularly starkly illustrated when a person who hasn’t grown up in the UK (and particularly in England) is on a quiz show and you wonder why anybody would think that English kings or U.K. TV shows from the 80s or U.K. sports teams from the 70s would be the things to ask about.

TL;DR: I would never take somebody’s performance at quizzes in and of itself as being a sign either of high or low levels of knowledge within any domain other than the specific domain of “acceptable quiz show knowledge”.

 

[kabbes]

I think the word "context" can be overused. The word itself is highly context sensitive! The abstractions of pure mathematics often don't have much in the way of reference to the empirical world. Going back to non-Euclidean geometry, it was developed by throwing out one of Euclid's unproven postulates. This was something there had been centuries of attempts at proving. It's only later that you get a meaning derived from physics (a context if you like). The engine driving the mathematical development was about looking at axioms and propositions derived from them.

Mathematics often looks more like a game of logic than knowledge as such. Sure it's constructed (although that has a specific meaning in the philosophy of mathematics). However I would suggest that mathematical knowledge is more know-how than know-about.

Sure, but (and I say this as somebody who did a reasonable amount of pure paths within my own maths degree) the ways in which even pure maths is pursued, the structures that are built to understand it, even the results that are deemed worth exploring, are all culturally determined. The Greeks were interested in number theory for religious reasons — when root-2 was proved irrational, they completely abandoned that area of the subject. Euclid’s parallel line axiom derived from assumptions about the heavens. Cantor was ostracised to the point of madness for his work on infinity size. All these people constructed their approaches to these subjects in the context they were forming them in. And when pure subjects gain the hint of applicability, they explode — see cryptography, for example; the construct moves on.

In a different universe, I suspect that a different mathematics would be derived that would ultimately achieve the same things to understand the same patterns. The underlying truths are universal but in the same way that different languages can express the same ideas with different words and syntax, the approach to mathematical constructs may look quite different.

 

[Knotted]

OK see what you mean. Cultural context. Fair enough.

 

[RedRedRose]

Isn't that less about ability, though, and more about what you've previously studied/been taught in a way that works and sparks your interest?

I’m a history graduate and teach social studies in an overseas setting. So, I’ve had chance to move into sciences through history teaching; I especially love teaching about hominids and the Neanderthals, looking at Columbian exchange and some of the big climatic events.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a Masters for some time. I initially, wanted to do a Masters in history. However, this time last year the school I was at, hadn’t balanced the books properly and tried to make me redundant.

To cut a long story short, the head said despite being a decent enough teacher, I was teaching the wrong subject and science teachers were virtually unsackable.

Not long after I made a determined shift towards learning environmental science. I already had some interest there anyway, but was finally shunted in that direction. The chemistry bits scare me, but a surprising lot of the other bits we have to partially know/cover in history: agricultural development, populations, urbanisation, diseases, tectonic plates, weather patterns etc.

 

[Mation]

I’m a history graduate and teach social studies in an overseas setting. So, I’ve had chance to move into sciences through history teaching; I especially love teaching about hominids and the Neanderthals, looking at Columbian exchange and some of the big climatic events.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a Masters for some time. I initially, wanted to do a Masters in history. However, this time last year the school I was at, hadn’t balanced the books properly and tried to make me redundant.

To cut a long story short, the head said despite being a decent enough teacher, I was teaching the wrong subject and science teachers were virtually unsackable.

Not long after I made a determined shift towards learning environmental science. I already had some interest there anyway, but was finally shunted in that direction. The chemistry bits scare me, but a surprising lot of the other bits we have to partially know/cover in history: agricultural development, populations, urbanisation, diseases, tectonic plates, weather patterns etc.

That sounds really positive Although chemistry scares me, too!

How's it going?

I love the convergence of what at first seemed to be unrelated subjects, and the surprising amount of relevant knowledgy stuff we accumulate over time, as talked about upthread in terms of being a mature student, and as you say with regard to your knowledge of history.

 

[RedRedRose]

Well, I'm working through my course, looking at ecosystems, carbon sinks, deforestation, prospects of a sixth extinction etc etc. Slightly out of my comfort zone, but not things I've never heard of prior. The 'heavy stuff' within biology and chemistry, will need to tackled in the future.

I know history gets a bad wrap, for being quite archaic and fossilized (boom tish) but I have never had that view. We have to take stuff from archeology, geography, philosophy, religious studies, linguistics, literature, economics (to name a few) just to make sense of the subject. And I have mentioned this over on the Environmental Reading thread, but there is a subsection within history that research about humans interaction with their environment, the exemplars are probably writers like Alfred W. Crosby and William McNeill.