And how many people failed to attend college because they, or their parents, gambled away the college fund?
That is an argument which is sometimes made by the anti-gambling people, but really how many specific cases have their been where parents gambled away junior's college money? It seems to be a popular cautionary story that happens rarely in practice (i.e. a variation of the "think of the children" fallacy). This type of logical fallacy has a long and colorful history in our legislature, and it is easier to appeal to emotion rather than logic (i.e. "if you are against me then you are against the children, how can you be against the children?"), but that doesn't make the tactic right. The more that we use emotional arguments in our national policy the greater the damage that we do to our constitution and the values that our nation was founded upon.
So, you respond to a call to emotions by saying "It's not that big of a problem" without providing _any_ data? Yes, he said almost literally, "Think of the children", but there is no statistical evidence on either side. I imagine there isn't much data on this, because gambling establishments wouldn't tout "We've ruined X people" (bad for business) and the causes behind someone's downfall are usually more complicated.
If we did have some statistics, though, then maybe we would see that ShadowRangerRIT is not simply pulling our heartstrings, but pointing out a serious issue: the negative effect that gambling has on children of gamblers.
Of course, a counter argument could be along the lines of "alcohol is legal but we have alcoholics" (but not "that's an appeal to emotion, but here's _no_ facts to back my claim up")
Returning to ShadowRanger's point, there are more losers than winners in gambling. In house games, the odds are stacked in favor of the house (so they can stay in business). Otherwise, money goes straight from one player to another. It's a zero-sum game, unless the losers go to the bank to get more money. So, when we think of gambling, we associate it with winning lots of money (as the casinos want us to think) but with some proportion of winners and losers, as it really is.
I don't buy the 'busy kids don't have time to misbehave' argument. Plenty of my friends had completely full schedules in elementary and middle schools (sports, activities, church, etc) and by the time we reached high school, they were tired of it, and dropped out of everything.
Anyways, this is only anecdotal evidence, which I believe is good enough to disprove your point, but I can't really say what the solution is, except good parenting, which I was fortunate enough to have.
What's to prevent someone using the wrong setting? A dialog box?
But seriously, I don't see how this would help with crowd control. Even on stun, the crowd will hear gun fire, and see guns, and conclude that lethal force is being used and panic or (worse) fight back.
And in what situation would you want to switch rapidly between lethal and non-lethal? I can see that putting down one weapon and picking up another can be problematic, and forces law enforcers to carry lots of equipment, but why not focus on creating lightweight weapons that do the same damage instead?
Add that to the concerns about overuse, and what happens if these get into the hands of those without training, and I don't think we have a viable solution.
if the science was done right, we must accept the results. Minor correction: Whether or not the science was done right, we must do everything we can to question/disprove those results and the model they support. If the model still stands after a certain amount of time/scrutiny, then we start calling it a theory. Of course, as parent's parent said, not even theories can be proven (including the hypothesis posited by this statement (recurse ad nauseum)).
I don't think you're taking this question far enough...
Why not start with pure mathematics until reaching the higest level they may need and only then start with the (programming|economics|accounting|engineering|...)?
You are partially right, in that we are not moments away from losing vast numbers of students (except in inner-cities, but they don't matter, right?), but we can still lose the interest of students (even if they're forced to still attend). I can name quite a few students from my high school class that were smart enough to really excel, but have lost motivation. One reason I've heard from them is that they had little sense of what use advanced classes would have.
I do like your final suggestion, if only it would work for the majority of students, or for me. Now that I am studying Engineering Physics at Cornell, I get extremely frustrated at times when something I learn reveals how oversimplified my previous teachers made things. But then I comfort myself the alternative: I would have had to wait years to even hear about the subject! What kept me going during the boring parts of class was to let my imagination run wild, and what better starting point for my imagination than reality as I understood it? If all I knew were numbers, that would be pretty boring.
Also, in my experience, I have always learned more math from science classes than from pure math classes. Even in subjects covered by both departments, I learned it better and faster from science. Now that I'm done with the required math track, I don't plan on taking any more courses from the math department. Case in point: one day last year, we covered propogating waves in differential equations. Took a whole lecture. Later that day, in E&M, we finished deriving Maxwell's equations, and our professor showed us what happens when you impose free-space conditions.
"And there you have it! A wave equation falls right out! You've all seen wave equations before, right?"
*mostly blank stares*
She spent 15 minutes going through the basics, with equations, diagrams, and gestures, and everyone was on the same page. Then she resumed her planned lecture.
Then, last semester in Thermo & Waves (the next physics course in the sequence), our professor felt that there was a better way (pedagogically) to derive Maxwell's equations, by using Gauss's and Stokes' theorems, so he spent the beginning of a lecture doing so.
Anyways, back on topic, learning is an NP-class problem, so I don't think an iterative approach is all that bad, as it's not likely we will find "the most optimal way" anytime soon. Of course, on average, I will agree that we are quite far from the optimal education system. Just think, it's bad enough to be forced to learn about subjects one has little interest in, but imagine how much worse if only one subject were taught at a time!
Considering that only half of scientific papers are true (recent slashdot article I can't find anymore) and that astronomers also were off by a factor of 2 in one of the dimensions of our galaxy (slashdot again), I think this story has a long time to wait before it's newsworthy.
Slashdot Mirror
And how many people failed to attend college because they, or their parents, gambled away the college fund?
That is an argument which is sometimes made by the anti-gambling people, but really how many specific cases have their been where parents gambled away junior's college money? It seems to be a popular cautionary story that happens rarely in practice (i.e. a variation of the "think of the children" fallacy). This type of logical fallacy has a long and colorful history in our legislature, and it is easier to appeal to emotion rather than logic (i.e. "if you are against me then you are against the children, how can you be against the children?"), but that doesn't make the tactic right. The more that we use emotional arguments in our national policy the greater the damage that we do to our constitution and the values that our nation was founded upon.
So, you respond to a call to emotions by saying "It's not that big of a problem" without providing _any_ data? Yes, he said almost literally, "Think of the children", but there is no statistical evidence on either side. I imagine there isn't much data on this, because gambling establishments wouldn't tout "We've ruined X people" (bad for business) and the causes behind someone's downfall are usually more complicated.
If we did have some statistics, though, then maybe we would see that ShadowRangerRIT is not simply pulling our heartstrings, but pointing out a serious issue: the negative effect that gambling has on children of gamblers.
Of course, a counter argument could be along the lines of "alcohol is legal but we have alcoholics" (but not "that's an appeal to emotion, but here's _no_ facts to back my claim up")
Returning to ShadowRanger's point, there are more losers than winners in gambling. In house games, the odds are stacked in favor of the house (so they can stay in business). Otherwise, money goes straight from one player to another. It's a zero-sum game, unless the losers go to the bank to get more money. So, when we think of gambling, we associate it with winning lots of money (as the casinos want us to think) but with some proportion of winners and losers, as it really is.
I don't buy the 'busy kids don't have time to misbehave' argument. Plenty of my friends had completely full schedules in elementary and middle schools (sports, activities, church, etc) and by the time we reached high school, they were tired of it, and dropped out of everything. Anyways, this is only anecdotal evidence, which I believe is good enough to disprove your point, but I can't really say what the solution is, except good parenting, which I was fortunate enough to have.
But seriously, I don't see how this would help with crowd control. Even on stun, the crowd will hear gun fire, and see guns, and conclude that lethal force is being used and panic or (worse) fight back.
And in what situation would you want to switch rapidly between lethal and non-lethal? I can see that putting down one weapon and picking up another can be problematic, and forces law enforcers to carry lots of equipment, but why not focus on creating lightweight weapons that do the same damage instead?
Add that to the concerns about overuse, and what happens if these get into the hands of those without training, and I don't think we have a viable solution.
I don't think you're taking this question far enough...
Why not start with pure mathematics until reaching the higest level they may need and only then start with the (programming|economics|accounting|engineering|...)?
You are partially right, in that we are not moments away from losing vast numbers of students (except in inner-cities, but they don't matter, right?), but we can still lose the interest of students (even if they're forced to still attend). I can name quite a few students from my high school class that were smart enough to really excel, but have lost motivation. One reason I've heard from them is that they had little sense of what use advanced classes would have.
I do like your final suggestion, if only it would work for the majority of students, or for me. Now that I am studying Engineering Physics at Cornell, I get extremely frustrated at times when something I learn reveals how oversimplified my previous teachers made things. But then I comfort myself the alternative: I would have had to wait years to even hear about the subject! What kept me going during the boring parts of class was to let my imagination run wild, and what better starting point for my imagination than reality as I understood it? If all I knew were numbers, that would be pretty boring.
Also, in my experience, I have always learned more math from science classes than from pure math classes. Even in subjects covered by both departments, I learned it better and faster from science. Now that I'm done with the required math track, I don't plan on taking any more courses from the math department. Case in point: one day last year, we covered propogating waves in differential equations. Took a whole lecture. Later that day, in E&M, we finished deriving Maxwell's equations, and our professor showed us what happens when you impose free-space conditions.
"And there you have it! A wave equation falls right out! You've all seen wave equations before, right?" *mostly blank stares*
She spent 15 minutes going through the basics, with equations, diagrams, and gestures, and everyone was on the same page. Then she resumed her planned lecture.
Then, last semester in Thermo & Waves (the next physics course in the sequence), our professor felt that there was a better way (pedagogically) to derive Maxwell's equations, by using Gauss's and Stokes' theorems, so he spent the beginning of a lecture doing so.
Anyways, back on topic, learning is an NP-class problem, so I don't think an iterative approach is all that bad, as it's not likely we will find "the most optimal way" anytime soon. Of course, on average, I will agree that we are quite far from the optimal education system. Just think, it's bad enough to be forced to learn about subjects one has little interest in, but imagine how much worse if only one subject were taught at a time!
Will an astronaut's space-suit help protect against law-suits?
Considering that only half of scientific papers are true (recent slashdot article I can't find anymore) and that astronomers also were off by a factor of 2 in one of the dimensions of our galaxy (slashdot again), I think this story has a long time to wait before it's newsworthy.