Mike Palij quoted an article from the New York Times by Benedict Carey that said:
"For years school curriculums have emphasized top-down instruction, especially for topics like math and science. Learn the rules first - the theorems, the order of operations, Newton's laws - then make a run at the problem list at the end of the chapter. Yet recent research has found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type of problem they're up against." Although I don't know where they go from there (and I know Mike isn't quoting this in the context of agreeing with it), this is almost a humorous description of the confusion of cause and effect. Just because experts may have developed a quick heuristic for learning something (probably by starting with the traditional method of learning the rules first, along with some examples to illustrate the rules), that doesn't mean that the best way to teach it or learn it is to teach this instantaneous grasp of the problem (or intuition). Maybe the so-called intuition is actually the result of learning the other information and then just learning to use the information most efficiently. To apply this to inferential statistics, I do feel sometimes that, certainly compared to beginning students, I have an intuitive grasp on the type of statistical analysis that will be appropriate for a given hypothesis. I don't know that there is a shortcut to that result which I know in my case started with a very traditional statistical education (doing HW exercises on paper each night in a five day a week class at my community college). I can't guarantee, however, that I developed any kind of intuitive sense about it until I began teaching Statistics in my second job out of grad school. I have developed a decision tree that I think is more of an algorithm than a heuristic and I don't think anyone feels they are intuitively solving the problem when they are using the decision tree developed on the basis of the rules. There is another part of the article (near the beginning) that I can imagine can be useful for developing what I would call a conceptual understanding. "For about a month now, Wynn, 17, has been practicing at home using an unusual online program that prompts him to match graphs to equations, dozens upon dozens of them, and fast, often before he has time to work out the correct answer. An equation appears on the screen, and below it three graphs (or vice versa, a graph with three equations). He clicks on one and the screen flashes to tell him whether he's right or wrong and jumps to the next problem." This sounds remarkably similar to one of the ways I teach the meaning of scatterplots and correlation coefficients. There is a game at: http://www.stat.uiuc.edu/courses/stat100/java/GCApplet/GCAppletFrame.html that generates scatterplots and allows you to guess the corresponding correlation coefficient. It produces them randomly so sometimes you will be asked to make almost ridiculous distinctions, (like to visually distinguish the scatterplot of an r of .83 from a scatterplot representing an r of .84). It can be fun and does allow students to eventually come to an understanding of scatterplots and correlation coefficients. Although this is good for its purpose, I think it is also important to help students understand how a correlation coefficient is calculated and how you can predict one variable by knowing the score of another variable. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Box 3055 x7295 rfro...@jbu.edu http://tinyurl.com/DrFroman Proverbs 14:15 "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps." -----Original Message----- From: Mike Palij [mailto:m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 12:58 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: re: [tips] Perceptual Learning and Statistics On Fri, 17 Jun 2011 08:38:56 -0700, Michael Britt wrote: >There has been a lot of talk on the internet lately about perceptual learning. > That can be either a good thing or a bad thing. >I believe that most of it was spurred by an article on the topic that >appeared in the NYT. I have a feeling you're referring this article by Benedict Carey; see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/health/07learn.html?pagewanted=all Note: a red flag in the article is represented by the following statement: |For years school curriculums have emphasized top-down instruction, |especially for topics like math and science. Learn the rules first - |the theorems, the order of operations, Newton's laws - then make a run |at the problem list at the end of the chapter. Yet recent research has |found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a |mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type |of problem they're up against. The above statement, IMHO, confuses a number of issues. Though I think that Gerd Gigerenzer has done a lot of good work, I am not convinced by his "fast and frugal heuristics" which he call "gut instinct". I assume that use of "gut instinct" above is referring to Gigerenzer's concept and not some bizarre notion that the way your stomach feels is guide to decision-making and problem solving. I would also argue that "gut instinct" is very different from coming up with a problem representation that leads to a quick solution (e.g., it is reported that Sir Ronald Fisher translated statistical problems into geometrical representations and worked out the problem in geometric terms and then re-mapped the process and solution back to a algebraic form). I also think that they may be many different definitions of what perceptual learning means though there may be a current viewpoint that "appears" to provide an adequate explanation. >I have to admit that I don't know much about this topic, so two >questions for those of you more familiar with it than I: > >1) What's the best source (book, published article) for learning how >perceptual learning works? Wikipedia has an entry on the topic (yadda-yadda); see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_learning You might want to check out some of the references there but I think the coverage of the topic is quite minimal (e.g., as a graduate student perceptual learning was a topic associated with Eleanor Gibson and appeared to be a topic in cognitive development; Eleanor's work is mentioned in only one sentence and no reference is given). I think that you do better with a PsycInfo search and perhaps looking the literature decade by decade but look for review articles. Poggio and Manfred and others appear to have re-invigorated the topic in the past decade (see their MIT press book "Perceptual Learning") but, since I don't keep up this area, I don't know if this an extension of previous research and theories or a completely new "paradigm". >2) Are there applications for the idea in the teaching of statistics >for psychology majors? I've been trying to apply what little I know >about perceptual learning to how I might use it in a stat class, but >it's just not clear to me yet. Wondering if any of you have used it or >are thinking about this as well. I don't know about this. David Krantz at Columbia has been looking at the question of how to teach statistics and how students understand the topics presented in statistics class. I don't if he believes in perceptual learning or not but you might check out his work and his perspective. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: rfro...@jbu.edu. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13039.37a56d458b5e856d05bcfb3322db5f8a&n=T&l=tips&o=11039 or send a blank email to leave-11039-13039.37a56d458b5e856d05bcfb3322db5...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. 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