Saying that “everything happens for a reason” is very different that knowing that everything has a reason for happening.
You can be a scientist without bringing your work home, but Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks (as do many science communicators) that we could better understand the world around us if we looked closer at the statistics behind it.
Like my chat with Dr. Tyson about his new science talk show and why Kirk is a better captain than Picard, in the video above I ask him what aspect of science he uses everyday. In short, it’s understanding probabilities and randomness. With so many events happening in the world — think of the millions of little decisions and interactions you make everyday — the odd day is the day nothing odd happens to you. Dr. Tyson explains why that’s important to realize above.
One would almost suspect that the entire school system design has been quietly modified to imbue children and youth with a sense of logical determinism in a clockwork universe that science abandoned two centuries ago, but which may very well be preferred by the scientifically ignorant in the statehouses who write the political checks.
What!? Probability and statistics were required parts of my K-12 AND college education (engineer). And I went to some pretty unknown rural schools in the midwest…
When I was a kid, my grandmother always cut the apple across. She said she wanted to, “see the star inside.”
I knew the answer to the apple question! But that’s what you get when you live in Washington State, Apples are boss!