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Monthly Archives: January 2019

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Two Swings, Two Misses: The New York Times on Education
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-30-2019

Two Swings, Two Misses: The New York Times on Education

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Two recent articles in the New York Times have gotten lots of teacherly attention.

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

The first, an op-ed by David Brooks, announces that “students learn from people they love.”

Brooks’s piece includes some heart-warming anecdotes, and name checks some important researchers: Antonio Damasio, for instance, and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

(Everyone admires Immordino-Yang’s work. An interview with her appeared on the blog just six weeks ago.)

The hyperbole of the headline, however, strikes me as profoundly unhelpful. “Love” just isn’t a useful word for considering the research that Brooks cites.

Said differently: lots of people learn all sorts of things from people they don’t love.

Students learn better when they have strong positive relationships with their teachers.

They learn better when they feel safe and taken care of.

They learn better with appropriate levels of stress. (Not “lots and lots,” but not “none” either.)

By all means, teachers should keep emotions in mind when we teach. But if “love” isn’t central to your teaching, don’t let Brooks worry you.

(Honestly: too much talk about “love” makes me worry about professional boundaries. We should respect and care about our students. Let’s keep it at that.)

Strike Two

The Times also offers an article about memory training techniques.

I often hear from teachers about Moonwalking with Einstein-like strategies for learning list of words and numbers.

(Another favorite: the method of loci — associating words with a string of familiar places.)

While I don’t doubt these strategies help people memorize random collections of names or digits, I have to ask: how often do teachers want our students to do that?

Most teachers answer that question: “almost never.”

As an English teacher, I want my students to understand the meanings of words, or to know how to subordinate a quotation in a participial phrase, or to explain the concept of “group protagonist” in Grapes of Wrath.

I simply can’t think of a long list of random stuff I want them to memorize.

(A student recently told me she’d been required to memorize information about 60 chemical elements. The method of loci might have helped her.

However: a) I’ve yet to find a chemistry teacher who thinks that this homework assignment was a good idea, and b) how much time would it take to learn those memory techniques in the first place?

Oh, and, c) I’m not sure that assignment really happened in the first place. It’s just possible that student exaggerated a smidge.)

In Sum…

Read the Times (or don’t) for its political coverage. Subscribe (or not) for the crosswords.

But: if you see education advice, check with a friendly MBE professional before you make changes in your classroom.

 

Big Hairy Audacious Education Proposal of the Month
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-28-2019

Big Hairy Audacious Education Proposal of the Month

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John Medina’s books have been a gateway drug for many a brain-focused teacher.

parenting teens

(Like so many others, I myself was introduced to the field by his book Brain Rules.)

His most recent book, Attack of the Teenage Brain!, joins a growing list of very helpful authors focused on adolescence and adolescents. (For instance: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Lisa Damour.)

Medina offers many suggestions: you can read about them here.

One in particular stands out for its combined wisdom and audacity: educating parents.

Follow the Logic

Medina follows a straightforward logical chain to his audacious proposal. It goes like this:

To succeed academically, high school students need extra high doses of executive function (EF).  Sadly, because of the neurobiological tumult of adolescence, the various neural networks that allow for EF struggle to get the job done.

All that myelination, all that blooming and pruning: it can add up to a cognitive muddle that we call “teenage behavior.”

Given a) the importance of executive function, and b) the difficulty of EF during adolescence, what can we do to give our teens a boost?

Sidebar: Defining Executive Function

Because we hear so much about EF, you might think that everyone knows what it is.

In fact, you might have noticed that everyone’s list of executive functions is different — and worry that you’re the only one who doesn’t understand why.

Don’t fear; it’s not you. Definitions of EF vary widely.

Medina boils executive function down to three key features: working memory, self-control/inhibition, and mental flexibility. (That last one creates all sorts of room for definitional variety. So: planning, organizing, task-switching, prioritizing, strategically postponing…you get the idea.)

To strengthen executive function, we can’t really improve working memory. But, we might be able to help with self-control and mental flexibility. How might we do so?

Parenting Matters: So, Try Educating Parents

Medina devotes chapter 4 of Attack to research on parenting and EF.  We have all sorts of research to show that the right kind of parenting boosts executive function, and the wrong kind undermines it.

If good parenting enhances EF, we might improve high school learning by promoting the right kind of parenting. His big hairy audacious suggestion: “a night school annex for parents.”

As Medina writes:

“The argument for creating such a program is rooted in a blunt observation: most adults are woefully unprepared to rear children.” (p. 105)

Simply put, the “right kind of parenting” can indeed be taught. It’s called “authoritative” parenting — contrasted with “indulgent,” “indifferent,” and (unhelpfully) “authoritarian” parenting.

Medina’s parenting annex would teach authoritative parenting, thereby improve teens’ EF, and thereby enhance their learning.

Objections, and Answers

Objection #1: who are you to define “the right kind of parenting”? Is my parenting wrong just because you say so?

Answer: Medina walks his readers through lots of research on this question. The short answer: “the right kind of parenting” results in healthy and effective adults.

“Permissive” or “authoritarian” parenting isn’t bad because Medina (and Laurence Steinberg) say so. It’s bad because children parented that way struggle as adults.

You might not agree with their answer, but that’s what they say.

Objection #2: A night school annex for parents? Let’s be practical: how on earth would that work? The money. The time. The curriculum. The headaches.

I mean, really?

Answer: Medina has a curriculum answer, but leaves the other questions for another day. If we as a society ever agree to tackle this problem, we’ll find the money. We’ll fix the headaches.

In brief: when we decide that educating teens calls for educating parents, we will get the job done.

 

Two Helpful Strategies to Lessen Exam Stresses
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-25-2019

Two Helpful Strategies to Lessen Exam Stresses

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Exam stress bothers many of our students. Sadly, it hinders students from lower socio-economic status (SES) families even more.

As a result, these students struggle — especially in STEM classes. And, exam stressthis struggle makes it harder for them to enter these important (and lucrative!) fields.

Can we break this cycle somehow?

Reducing Exam Stress: Two Approaches

Christopher Rozek tried a combination of strategies to help lower-SES science students manage exam stress.

This research stands out for a number of reasons: in particular, it included a large sample (almost 1200 students). And, it took place in a school, not a psychology lab. That is, his results apply to the “real world,” not just a hermetically sealed research space.

Rozek worked with students taking a 9th grade biology class. Before they took the two exams in the course, Rozek had students write for ten minutes.

One group spent their ten minutes writing about their current thoughts and feelings. This approach lets students “dump” their anxiety, and has been effective in earlier studies. (By the way: this earlier research is controversial. I’ve written about that controversy here.)

Another group read a brief article showing that the right amount of stress can enhance performance. This reading, and the writing they did about it, helps students “reappraise” the stress they feel.

A third group did shortened versions of both “dumping” and “reappraising” exercises.

And the control group read and wrote about the importance of ignoring and suppressing negative/stressful emotions.

So, did the “dump” strategy or the “reappraise” strategy help?

Dramatic Results

Indeed, they both did.

For example, Rozek and Co. measured the effect these strategies (alone or together) had on the exam-score gap between high- and low-SES students.

The result? They cut the gap by 29%.

Rozek also tracked course failure. Among low-SES students, these strategies cut the failure rate by 50%.

(In the control group, 36% of the low SES students failed the class; in the other three groups, that rate fell to 18%. Of course, 18% is high — but it’s dramatically lower than 36%.)

In his final measure, Rozek found that — after these interventions — low SES-students evaluated their stress much more like the high SES-students. The gap between these ratings fell…by 81%.

All this progress from a 10 minute writing exercise.

Classroom Guidance to Reduce Exam Stress

If you’ve got students who are likely to feel higher levels of anxiety before a test, you might adapt either (or both) of these strategies for your students.

The best way to make these strategies work will vary depending on your students’ age and academic experience.

You might start by reviewing Rozek’s research — click the link above, and look for the “Procedure” section on page 5. From there, use your teacherly wisdom to make those procedures fit your students, your classroom, and you.

Strategies that Backfire: Monitoring Screen Time
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-23-2019

Strategies that Backfire: Monitoring Screen Time

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Teachers and parents, reasonably enough, worry about the time that children spend looking at screens. Given the phones, tablets, phablets, laptops, and televisions that surround them, it seems normal to worry about the long-term effects of screens, screens, screens.

monitoring screen time

Monitoring screen time seems the obvious parenting strategy, and obvious teacher recommendation.

Not So Fast…

Recent research out of Canada throws doubt on this seemingly sensible approach.

Researchers surveyed parents of young children (ages 1.5-5), asking about their technology habits and parenting approaches.

Sure enough, they found that monitoring screen time correlates with an increase in the child’s technology use.

That is: when parents reward children with extra screen time, those children use more screens. Ditto parents who punish with reduced screen time. Ditto parents who simply keep track of their child’s screen time.

YIKES.

What’s a Parent to Do?

As is so often true, our behavior points the way. Parents who use screens less often in front of their children model the behavior they want to see. Result: less screen time.

This finding holds true especially for screens at mealtimes.

The best advice we’ve got so far: if you don’t want your children to obsesses over their tables, avoid monitoring screen time.

Several Caveats

First, given the survey methodology, the study can find correlation, but can’t conclude causation.

Second, the nitty-gritty gets complicated. The research team kept track of multiple variables: mothers’ behavior vs. fathers’ behavior; screen time on week days vs. screen time on weekends. To understand the specific connections, click the link above.

Third, this study focused short-term correlations with very young children. We simply don’t know about older children. Who knows: teens forbidden from playing Minecraft more than 3 hours a day might just play less Minecraft.

Finally, I think research about bright screens before sleep is well-established enough to be worth a reminder here. Blue light from computer screens can muddle melatonin onset, and thereby interfere with sleep. In this case in particular, we should model healthy screen behavior.

Does Drawing a Simple Picture Benefit Memory?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-22-2019

Does Drawing a Simple Picture Benefit Memory?

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If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many words is drawing a picture worth?

drawing benefits memory

More specifically, Jeffrey Wammes & Co. have been exploring this question: is it true that drawing benefits memory? If I draw a picture of a word, will I remember it better than if I simply wrote that word down several times?

To explore this question, Wammes and his team have run a series of studies over the last several years. Basically, they’re trying to disprove their own hypothesis. If they can’t disprove it…well, it’s increasingly likely to be true.

The basic studies took a fairly simple form. Students saw a word and then spent 40 seconds drawing a picture of it. Or, they saw a word and spent 40 seconds writing it down several times.

Which words did they remember better? Yup: the words that they had drawn.

This effect held up not only in a psychology lab, but also in a college lecture hall.

Drawing Benefits Memory: More Advanced Studies

This hypothesis makes a kind of rough-and ready sense, for a number of reasons.

For instance, it just seems plausible that drawing benefits memory because visuals aide memory. Or, because drawing requires a greater degree of cognitive processing than simply writing.

So: perhaps drawing is but one example of these other effects.

Wammes and Co. wanted to see if that’s true. (Remember: they’re trying to disprove their hypothesis.)

So, they repeated the study several more times. In some cases, students drew pictures for some words and looked at pictures of other words.

Or, in another study, they drew pictures of some words and wrote down key features of other words. (Writing down key features requires higher levels of processing.)

In every case, they found that drawing produces even greater benefits than each sub-strategy. Students remembered more words that they had drawn than words they had processed in all those other ways.

Classroom Implications

What should classroom teachers do with this information?

In the first place, keep in mind that we’re still in early days of testing this technique. Much of this research has focused on nouns that are relatively easy to draw: say, “apple.”

At the same time, Wammes ran one study where students either drew or copied verbatim definitions of words. For instance, “stratoscopes” are “airborne telescopes that are mounted on high altitude balloons.” Once again, drawing led to better memory than simple copying.

Wammes’s team is currently exploring drawings of more abstract words: I hope to see those results published soon.

With these caveats in mind, I think we can plausibly use this approach in our classrooms. If you think a word, definition, concept, or process can plausibly be drawn, give your students a change to “review by drawing.”

Or, if you’ve built in a moment for retrieval practice, encourage students to include a drawing as part of their retrieval.

You might conclude that a particular topic doesn’t lend itself to drawing. An an English teacher, I’m not immediately sure how to draw “ode” or “concatenation” or “litotes.”

But, if a word or concept seems drawable to you, you might give students a chance to try out this mnemonic aide.

A Final Note

I emailed Dr. Wammes with a few questions about his research. In his reply, he included this quite wonderful sentence:

“There certainly will be situations where it [drawing] doesn’t work, I just unfortunately haven’t found them yet.”

Too often, teachers can take research findings as absolute injunctions. When we learn about the 10 minute rule, we think: “okay, I have to change it up every ten minutes!”

But, that’s just not true.

Psychology findings will benefits some of our classroom situations, some of our students, some of our lesson plans, some of our schools.

But, almost no research finding always applies. We have to translate and adapt and tinker.

The field of Mind, Brain, Education is a partnership: teachers learn from researchers, and researchers learn from teachers.

So, when you try this technique in your classroom, keep track of your results. If you pass them on to me, I’ll let the researchers know.

 

 

The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Eric R. Kandel
Rebecca Gotlieb
Rebecca Gotlieb
January-20-2019

The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Eric R. Kandel

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One of the most complex unsolved mysteries in science is how the brain produces consciousness.  The study of brain disorders not only helps us understand and treat those conditions; it also renders insights into questions about human consciousness, sense of self, and creativity.  It can help us appreciate both our individuality and our shared humanity. Eric R. Kandel, Columbia University professor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute senior investigator and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, advances these beliefs in his book The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves. Kandel, who also authored The Age of Insight, reviews the latest research on autism, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, addiction, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease to illuminate the factors that contribute to these diseases, how the diseases are experienced, possible points of intervention, and what these diseases reveal about our social, emotional, decision-making, memory, kinesthetic, and creative abilities more generally.

Kandel commences with a brief overview of the history of psychiatry and neurology and modern tools for studying the brain and disordered behavior. He emphasizes that genes and environment interact to disrupt neural circuitry, resulting in disordered minds.  Brain disorders can be caused by over or under active brain circuits or ineffective communication within the brain because of injury, altered synaptic connections, or developmentally inappropriate patterns of brain connection.

Kandel contends that we are inherently social; typical development cannot proceed in isolation. Yet, autism is a disorder related to difficulty connecting with people and understanding others’ minds. The so called “social brain,” which includes the inferior temporal cortex, amygdala, temporoparietal junction, and other regions, may be disrupted in autism. Autism spectrum disorders, like several other brain disorders, have a strong genetic basis and may come about in part because of age-related mutations in fathers’ sperm.

We are not only social beings but also emotional. Indeed, emotions, or states of readiness in our brain in response to our surroundings, play a critical role in our everyday lives and in our constructions of our sense of self.  One in every three Americans will experience anxiety at least once in their life, and about 8% will experience post-traumatic stress disorder. Depression is a mood disorder that affects about 5% of people and is characterized by feelings of extreme sadness, hopelessness and worthlessness and by a lack of energy.  Although it can be cruelly stereotyped as such, depression is not a personal or moral weakness. Kandel explains how the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, ketamine, cognitive behavioral theory, and brain stimulation can all be used, under different conditions and in different combinations, to treat depression. These disorders are teaching us about where emotions arise in the brain (i.e., in areas including the hypothalamus, amygdala, striatum, and prefrontal cortex), how the brain and body engage in bidirectional communication, and how emotions impact behavior, decision-making, and morality.

Several brain disorders are caused by dopamine imbalances. Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder related to excessive dopamine. It affects 1% of the population by disrupting thinking, behavior, memory, and sense of self starting in late adolescence.  Whereas depression results primarily from functional abnormalities in the brain, schizophrenia results primarily from anatomical abnormalities. Unfortunately, most currently available treatments for schizophrenia address only the symptoms related to disordered thoughts and not the symptoms like lack of motivation. Fortunately, preemptive therapy for people at risk for developing schizophrenia is promising.  Parkinson’s disease, a motor disorder associated with tremors at rest and slow movement, is caused by defective protein folding that causes dopamine producing neurons in the brain’s substantia nigra to die. Addiction is another chronic disease in which dopamine is involved. Medications that help people forget the pleasure of an addictive substance can help treat addiction. Unfortunately, even though drug overdose is a leading cause of death for people under 50, there has been minimal investment in drugs to treat addiction, Kandel laments.

Although memory abilities can be disrupted in several of the disorders Kandel reviews, in dementia memory loss is the primary symptom. Alzheimer’s disease is fundamentally different from age-related memory decline. It is causes by protein misfolding, causing toxic clumps that create neurofibrillary tangles. Our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, including genetic and health risk factors for developing it, has increased rapidly.

Synthesizing his review of these disorders, Kandel offers insights into our understanding of creativity and consciousness. Creativity has a biological basis in the brain and the capacity for creativity is universal (i.e., not dependent on mental disorders). By reviewing the art of people with various brain disorders Kandel suggests that some of the elements that are important for creativity are perseverance, collaboration, mind-wandering, and combining unrelated elements. As Sigmund Freud argued, unconscious mental work impacts conscious thinking. Disordered minds are revealing that our decisions emerge from our unconscious thoughts, more than from our conscious thoughts.

Kandel concludes with a powerful prediction—that neurology and psychiatry will merge soon into one discipline that examines how genes and environment lead to individual differences in brains and behavior. This field could move us to personalizing medical treatment such that we may be able to prevent the diseases of the brain and mind.

Kandel, E.R. (2018). The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves.New York, NY: Farrar, Strous, and Giroux.

Spiders in Budapest: Deeper Understanding of the Brain
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-18-2019

Spiders in Budapest: Deeper Understanding of the Brain

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“Why can I forget what the capital of Hungary is, but not that I’m afraid of spiders?”

Michael S. C. Thomas kicks off his website “How The Brain Works” with this intriguing question.

Dr. Thomas is a good person to ask. In the first place, he directs the Centre for Educational Neuroscience. He knows from brains.

In the second, he’s got a lively writing voice. Better than most, he can explain important brain concepts without being pedantic, and without relying on Latinate jargon.

The website covers several helpful topics: the importance of sleep, the structure of synapses, the reasons brains have two hemispheres. (And: why being “left-brained” really isn’t a thing.)

I recommend this website as a lively introduction to (or review of) important neuroscience information.

And: if you want to know the answer to that spider/Hungary question, click here.

Dodging “Dodgy” Research: Strategies to Get Past Bunk
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-15-2019

Dodging “Dodgy” Research: Strategies to Get Past Bunk

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If we’re going to rely on research to improve teaching — that’s why you’re here, yes? — we need to hone our skepticism skills.

After all, we don’t want just any research. We want the good stuff.

But, we face a serious problem. If we’re not psychology or neuroscience researchers, how can we tell what’s good?

Over at TES, Bridget Clay and David Weston have four suggestions.

Seek out review articles.

Don’t be impressed by lists.

Look for disagreement.

Don’t be impressed by one shiny new study.

Their post is clear and thoughtful; I encourage you to read it all.

Second Look

I want to go back to their third suggestion: “seek criticism.” This one habit, I believe, can make us all substantially wiser readers of classroom-relevant research.

Here’s what I mean.

When I first started in brain-research world, I wanted to hear the enduring truths that researchers discovered about learning.

I would then (nobly, heroically) enact those truths in my classroom.

As an entirely hypothetical example: imagine I heard a presentation about research showing that fluorescent lights inhibit learning. (To be clear: I have no idea if this is true, or even if anyone claims that it’s true. I just made this up as an example.)

Given that research finding, I would boldly refuse to turn on the fluorescent lights in my classroom, and set up several lamps and candles. Learning would flourish.

Right?

Research Reality

Well, maybe. But, maybe not.

Researchers simply don’t discover “the truth about learning.” Instead, they try to disprove a particular claim in a particular way. If they can’t disprove it, then that claim seem slightly more plausible.

But, someone else might disprove it in some other way. Or, under some other conditions.

Such an incremental, lumpy process isn’t surprising or strange. The system should work this way.

When Clay and Weston warn us against being impressed by one new study, they’re making exactly this point. If one research team comes to a conclusion once, that’s interesting … but we shouldn’t make any changes to our classrooms just yet.

So, back to my example. I’ve heard that presentation about fluorescent lights. What should I do next?

I should — for the time being — assume that the claim (“fluorescent lights inhibit learning”) is UNTRUE, and go look for counter-examples.

Or, perhaps, I should assume the claim is CONTROVERSIAL, and seek out evidence on both sides.

How do I do that?

Skeptical Research, with Boundaries

Believe it or not, start by going to google.

Use words like “controversy” or “debate” or “untrue.”

So, I’d google “fluorescent lights and learning controversy.” The results will give you some ideas to play with. (In fact, I just tried that search. LOTS of interesting sources.)

You might go to Google Scholar, which provides links to scholarly articles. Try “fluorescent light learning.” (Again, lots of sources — in this case including information about ADHD.)

When you review several of these articles, you’ll start noticing interesting specifics. Researchers call them “boundary conditions.” A research claim might prove true for one subset of learners — that is, within these boundaries — but not another.

So: perhaps 3rd graders do badly with fluorescent lights. What about 10th graders?

Perhaps such light hampered learning of math facts. What about critical thinking?

Perhaps the researchers studied turtles learning mazes. Almost certainly, you aren’t teaching turtles. Until we test the claim with humans, we shouldn’t worry too much about turtle learning.

Perhaps — in fact, quite often — culture matters. Research findings about adolescence will differ in the US and Japan because cultural norms shape behavior quite differently.

Back to Beginnings

Clay & Weston say: seek out disagreement.

I say: AMEN!

Science works by asking incremental questions and coming to halting, often-contradictory findings.

Look for the contradictions. Use your teacherly wisdom to sort through them. You’ll know what to do next.

 

Research Summary: The Best and Worst Highlighting Strategies
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-13-2019

Research Summary: The Best and Worst Highlighting Strategies

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Does highlighting help students learn?

As is so often the case, the answer is: it depends.

highlighting

The right kind of highlighting can help. But, the wrong kind doesn’t help. (And, might hurt.)

And, most students do the wrong kind.

Today’s Research Summary

Over at Three Star Learning Experiences, Tim Surma & Co. offer a helpful overview of highlighting research.

The headlines: highlighting helps students if the highlight the right amount of the right information.

Right amount: students tend to highlight too much. This habit reduces the benefit of highlighting, for several reasons.

Highlighting can help if the result is that information “pops out.” If students highlight too much, then nothing pops out. After all, it’s all highlighted.

Highlighting can help when it prompts students to think more about the reading. When they say “this part is more important than that part,” this extra level of processing promotes learning. Too much highlighting means not enough selective processing.

Sometimes students think that highlighting itself is studying. Instead, the review of highlighted material produces the benefits. (Along with the decision making before-hand.)

Right information.

Unsurprisingly, students often don’t know what to highlight. This problem shows up most often for a) younger students, and b) novices to a topic.

Suggestions and Solutions

Surma & Co. include several suggestions to help students highlight more effectively.

For instance, they suggest that students not highlight anything until they’ve read everything. This strategy helps them know what’s important.

(I myself use this technique, although I tend to highlight once I’ve read a substantive section. I don’t wait for a full chapter.)

And, of course, teachers who teach highlighting strategies explicitly, and who model those strategies, will likely see better results.

Surma’s post does a great job summarizing and organizing all this research; I encourage you to read the whole thing.

You might also check out John Dunlosky’s awesome review of study strategies. He and his co-authors devote lots of attention to highlighting, starting on page 18. They’re quite skeptical about its benefits, and have lots to contribute to the debate.

For other suggestions about highlighting, especially as a form of retrieval practice, click here.

 

Let’s Have More Fun with the Correlation/Causation Muddle
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January-10-2019

Let’s Have More Fun with the Correlation/Causation Muddle

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We’ve explored the relationship of correlation and causation before on the blog.

In particular, this commentary on DeBoer’s blog notes that — while correlation doesn’t prove causation — it might be a useful first step in discovering causation.

DeBoer argues for a difficult middle ground. He wants us to know (say it with me) that “correlation doesn’t prove causation.” AND he wants us to be reasonably skeptical, not thoughtlessly reactive.

On some occasions, we really ought to pay attention to correlation.

More Fun

I recently stumbled across a livelier way to explore this debate: a website called Spurious Correlations.

If you’d like to explore the correlation between — say — the number of letters in the winning word of the Scripps National Spelling Bee and — hmmm — the number of people killed by venomous spiders: this is definitely website for you.

Just so you know, the correlation of the divorce rate in Maine with per-capita consumption of margarine is higher than 99%.

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