Errors vs. Bugs and the End of Stupidity

[celandine13]

"A pianist has to believe in telekinesis.  You have to believe you have the power to move your fingers with your mind."

I learned that from Phil Cohn, my piano teacher's piano teacher.  Once in a while, when I was in high school, she'd arrange for me to have a master class with him.  He was a diminutive man who looked exactly like Dr. Strangelove,

Comments

Excellent

[bbkahuna]

I'm really glad you did turn this public (and also that a friend linked me to it). One of the best reads I've had this year.

[gustavolacerda]

Nice post!

Re: Knewton, I think you are making a false dichotomy. Do you actually know what kind of analysis they are doing? My understanding is that they do what might be called "statistical bug detection" (among other types of analyses). I would say that this is one of the holy grails of psychometrics, which few people can approach because there is a high hurdle in terms of knowledge engineering. e.g. you need a graph to tell you which production rules (whether good or buggy) lead to which kinds of behavior.

A must-read

[ext_1190194]

I'm telling everyone I know to read this. I've been claiming for years that saying "I'm stupid" is one of the biggest causes of stupidity, but I didn't have theory to back it up - now I do. Thanks!

[supergee]

Excellent. I have written a post of my own about it.

[firecat]

Here via andrewducker -- superb!