Items to Share: 25 May 2014

Education Focus

• Introducing Carl’s Banned-Word Scanner – Phenomena: The Loom 'I’ve gotten very persnickety about the individual words and phrases that students choose. I’ve built up a list of “banned words” that I’ve come across in assignments and which I never want to see in class again. It’s not that those words are absolutely wrong in terms of their meaning. It’s just that writers–both new and veteran–should try to do better.' 

• Top 5 Ways to Explain - badly... (Tom Boulter: Thinking on Learning) 'There have been some fantastic blogs appearing recently on what seems a bafflingly marginalised topic in much teacher training and INSET: the techniques and strategies behind constructing clear, effective and memorable explanations.'

Other Business

• Notation, notation, notation: a brief history of mathematical symbols | Joseph Mazur | Science | theguardian.com  '[A]lmost all maths was written rhetorically before the 16th century, often in metered poetry. Most people think symbols for addition, subtraction or equality had been around long before Euclid wrote his Elements in the first century BCE. No!'

• Devorah E. Klein , Gary Klein and Shawna J. Perry take a critical look at a key component of health-care reform. - Project Syndicate  'As we consider a likely future in which physicians adhering to [Evidence-Based Medicine] are paid more, we must consider the cognitive limitations and the human cost of unquestioning compliance with so-called “best practices.” A more effective approach must be to combine EBM with the expertise and intuition of experienced caregivers, and to take the benefits of both.' (Gary Klein is well-known for his studies of firefighters and other practitioners who have to make fast decisions: see this conversation between him and Daniel Kahneman—also on video.)