Discussing Bogus Statistics and Science with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
On the way home from my daughter Florence’s charter Waldorf School in Pacific Grove (California), we had a discussion about bogus science.
Florence began by telling me
that one of the parents at school said that aliens caused the 9/11 terrorist attack
when we went to the astronomy field trip at Pebble Beach.
I told Florence, “That is a
bogus science remark. She probably said
it, because you-know-who runs a Girl Scout troop and does not invite most of
the class to participate despite getting funding as a class troop.”
I continued, “Do not worry about being in the troop, we do more interesting family field trips and activities, because dad and I are better cultured and educated than the troop leader’s family.”
“Just tell alien-terrorist mom that we want to retain our culture, religion, and heritage like scout leader mom. The rest of the class are free to do the things we do, but many of our family field trips are religious or violate dietary laws,” I said.
Florence laughed at my peacekeeping efforts for the day. I used this discussion as a teaching moment about bogus science, the scientific method, and statistical correlation.
“Bogus science is actually kind of fun, but you have to recognize it for what it is. Aliens are the topic of the 2000s. When I was young, there were books out on the Nazca Lines in southern Peru that were supposed to be landing sites for alien planes,” I said.
Florence was laughing.
“But, the topic I was more interested in was Pyramid Power. I asked my science teacher, if I could do my science project on pyramid power even though I knew this was phony, but I thought it would be a good way to show how the scientific method works,” I said.
My teacher agreed to a pyramid power experiment that I would devise. We skipped a human subjects interview.
I made a presentation to the class about the pyramids at Giza, the architect Imhotep, and the process you need to go through to establish a theory with the scientific method.
The outline I gave at the presentation for the scientific method follows:
-Ask a question
-Do background research
-Construct a hypothesis (A
simple one would be: If I do this, then this will happen:____________________)
-Test the hypothesis with an
experiment
-Do test results support your
hypothesis? If so, proceed to the next
step.
-Do the results not support
your hypothesis? If not, analyze the results, but do not change the data to
support your hypothesis. Proceed to the
next step.
-Analyze data and draw
conclusions. This step is different from
seeing if data supports your hypothesis.
Notably, see if your research has further research implications.
-Communicate your results in
written and spoken form.
My hypothesis, which I developed from the book named something like Pyramid Power, was that if my science and United Nations teacher sat directly under the apex of a pyramid over her head, she would become neater and more organized.
In theory, the force of the pyramid was supposed to concentrate and send a ray of power into her brain and make my teacher think better.
She had to record in a journal over a month-long period any changes in her routine that made her neater and more organized on a daily basis. She had to take a picture of her desk on the first day of the experiment as a baseline to see if any changes were apparent at the end of the experiment.
I bought an engineering toy set with tubes and connectors, which we hoisted over her desk as a class project.
During the month of the experiment, all of us would crowd around her desk and take any chance we could to sit at her desk and say, “Buzzzz” and shake like the force was with us amidst much laughter.
At the end of thirty days, our science teacher shared her notes with us and said she had become more organized while sitting under the pyramid.
At this point, our science
teacher became a scientist and not an entertainer. She took this opportunity to tell us about
correlation in statistics that we would take in college.
“The better organization
could have been due to the pyramid or some other factor. But, as all of you kids were crowding around
my desk, I kept grade books and notes to other teachers put away.”
“So, another factor caused me to be organized. I can talk, but when you are dealing data, you have to take many factors into consideration. Many times thinking of why something happened in dollar figures, helps evaluate an data to draw a conclusion,” she said.
After that, all of us took photos under with our arms held out buzzing to conclude my Pyramid Power project.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Marrying France and Eating Soup with Chopsticks
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