what happens when a test company gets it wrong

[Katie Wasserman]

(Sorry for this way off topic post.)

(10-19-2014 03:28 PM)lrdheat Wrote:  Concerning the lion in the cage, I saw the probabilistic way to catch a lion stated as: Place an open cage in lion country. There is a non-zero probability of a lion being in the cage at time >0. Wait!

Surprisingly, this is exactly how lobsters are caught. Lobsters traps (or pots as they are sometimes called) are really poor ways to catch them as lobsters have no problem getting out of them. So when a fisherman pulls up the trap it's just luck if a lobster is in it. (Of course they do bait the trap to increase this probability.) However, this technique works very well to keep an abundant lobster population off coastal Maine.

(Back on topic.)

I agree with Don, the way to teach math, physics, chemistry or any exact discipline is to teach strict, simple rules then much later in time students can learn that they're not absolute. Didn't we all learn Newtonian mechanics before relativity? A calculator that gives different answers to a basic problem (median) depending on the mode you're in is not a good way for students to learn.