The only Professor of Risk, not quite his full title but you get the gist, in the entire country has demanded that schoolchildren are taught about probability so that they can assess the risk element in all manner of things.
He claims that in order to properly understand and consider the possible risks inherent in everyday life and Daily Mail headlines, children need a good grounding in the fundamentals of probability.
(Spot someone who's trying to talk up his position to save his job?)
He proposes that probability be taught in maths lessons.
Well, we know academia is an insular profession, but where the fuck has he been for the last 15 years?
Probability has been on the primary curriculum since at least 1993, if not before. And if it's on the primary curriculum you can bet your bottom dollar it's on the secondary curriculum too.
And the funny thing is, even though we teach probability, the kids stil don't have a clue as to the likelihood of events occuring. Many is the child who's come to me in tears because the earth is going to be smashed to smithereens by an incoming meteorite, any day now!!! It's what their Mum said and she heard it on the news!!!
On a more realistic level they still can't work out that when they saw Miss in the pub last night at 10.30pm she is not likely to believe that they couldn't do their homework because the computer broke down.
I didn't learn about probability at school, indeed I find it a peculiar concept in a mathematical sense and not really relevant when dealt with in this way.
However, watching the gee-gees with my Dad, I soon got the hang of odds on, evens and against, and am able to assess risk adequately.
When the kids were smaller we used to walk to school in the next village, a couple of miles away, across a very busy main road and then a shortcut across two fields.
"Oooh, you're brave," said the other Mums. "Aren't you scared walking across the fields? What about that Lyn Russell? (Battered to death along with one of her daughters, whilst her other daughter Josie was left critically injured.)
"Well," I would reply, "One person gets attacked once in a blue moon, how many people wander about the countryside everyday with nothing happening to them? Must be millions."
That seems like a reasonable assessment of risk to me.
The good professor argues that if we don't give children this understanding, and I'm sure it used to be called "common sense", then they wil all end up as thugs, marauders and criminals.
More like bankers and politicians I should say.
ianrthorpe
Given the American constitution states only a "Natural Biorn DCitizen of the USA can become President what's the mathematical probability of a Kenyan born British colonial citizen who gained Kenyan citizenship on the country's independence (but was still entitle to claim British citizenship), who later became an Indonesian citizen when his American Mother who could keep her knickers on around foreign guys and who could not pass on her citizenship to her son as she was a minor at the time of his birth and who has been unable to provide any evidence that he has ever held US citizenship (apart from a crudely forged shortform Birth certificate issues for his younger hald sister could become President.
But it look as if it is about to happen.
I find it strange that mathematicians are so fixated on probabilities and so disparaging about astrology. After all they're about the same thing really, predicting what's going to happen. And while Astrology is bollocks but at least gives us the hope of coming into some money or getting a shag while mathematical probabilities just betray our hopes.
How many statistical certs did Dad, either Grandad or me back that were overturned by a complete fluke?
Mathematics my arse, all you need is to be able to do sums.