Science

Consensus in Science

2019-12-03 | Reading time: 1 minute

A great one-page editorial about the issue of consensus in science.
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Recommendation: Steven Pinker: “An Unnecessary Defense of Reason and a Necessary Defense of the University’s Role in Advancing It”

2019-10-16 | Reading time: 1 minute

Steven Pinker's Keynote talk at the 2nd Heterodox Academy Annual Conference in June 2019 is well worth listening to.

Image: Half Hour of Heterodoxy Logo
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Climate Change Activism

2019-10-15 | Reading time: 4 minutes

Some thoughts on Fridays4Future, Students4Future, and Scientist4Future -- and strikes at schools and universities.

Image: Pale Blue Dot.
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False Dichotomies (Presentation Slides, German)

2019-10-04 | Reading time: 1 minute

Slides (in German) about false dichotomies (a rhetorical fallacy), expanded to cover false moral dichotomies (going back to Haidt and referring Boghossian's and Lindsay's book «How to have impossible conversations»).
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The Right Kind of Wrong. Or: Using bad practice just because it’s industry standard.

2019-07-30 | Reading time: 1 minute

What do you do when something is "industry standard", but clearly inferior. Yet, you get into trouble when you do it better, because people don't recognize it as better?
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The best predictor for future behavior is past behavior. — Or: What I wouldn’t give for a good Learning Analytics System

2019-07-30 | Reading time: 3 minutes

It's impressive what you can do with the information about students performance way before they take their final exam. If there just were a good learning analytics system to ... you know, actually use the information. Of course, that would require that student performance was actually something most universities did care about.
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Grading Paper Exams with an iPad

2019-07-28 | Reading time: 1 minute

Turns out you can grade paper exams pretty well with an iPad.
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Stupid Software: Excel

2019-07-16 | Reading time: 1 minute

Apparently Excel likes my students, it changes the scope of formulas without warning, resulting in very different results.
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Regulating citizens to the mean (with an SD of 0)

2019-06-05 | Reading time: 5 minutes

There are currently a few ... interesting developments that cast a deep shadow on future creativity. At least, that how it appears to me. It’s not that the situation is a problem now, but there is a trend, and I don’t like where it leads.
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Necrophilic Teaching

2019-06-05 | Reading time: 1 minute

Teaching dead bodies.
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