This-essay is a7309121.htm which is available at the web-site www.essayz.com. See more notes at the bottom. Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay By-Months By-Years By-Words Webs of Like-&-Un-Like ESSAYS <==> Like-&-UN-Like This-One ========================================================== %CONFIDENCE LIMITS 730912 Victims of the accuracy syndrome fail to be free to see the value of dealing with confidence limits in a crude way, Such technocrats may, via sophisticated computations, calculate confidence limits to be associated with an accurately determined value. Such exemplary behavior tends to enslave others to the accuracy syndrome. Non- scientists are rarely encouraged to make use of their common sense and of order-of- magnitude computations to arrive at crude confidence limits which may easily be placed upon quantities of practical importance in seeking to solve real problems. All too often non-scientists are compulsively concerned with the accurate numerical answer to a question. Since they know they are not competent to figure out an accurate answer which will agree with that of the experts, the non-scientists are not inclined to even start to think about the question. Such matters are left to "experts": i.e., technocrats. Science instruction offered to students of all ages should encourage them to use common sense and make crude estimates of upper and lower bounds on the likely results of accurate determinations of important numerical quantities. If citizens would but start to think about what might be a reasonable upper bound on the reserve fossil fuel supply, they might become aware of the real nature of the energy crisis. If non-scientists would think of the kinds of things which might be done with the money spent on fattening the pockets of highway builders, they might recognize that it would be possible to solve transportation problems rather than aggravate them. Many of the real problems of modern society have quantitative aspects. In each case citizens would do well to get their heads together to make crude but reasonable upper and lower estimates on what the relevant magnitudes might turn out to be. At that point they might ask some significant new questions of the technocrats which dominate their lives. The ability to estimate confidence limits is an ability which might easily be facilitated by a helpful science education program---provided the scientists who teach are willing to help liberate future citizens to ask new questions which might embarrass future technocrats. (c) 1999 by Paul A. Smith in GO: essayz.com "Search for Integrity and Honesty" (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================
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