I am an old guy who has been around for a while and it appears to me that one of the biggest and most important concept that is missing from our education system is the understanding of probability. I am not talking about being a card shark, but a concept that is basic to operating as a human in the real world. In this blog I will develop my point.
Most people seem to understand that if you flip a coin that the chances of it ending up heads is the same as it ending up as tails, but is about where their understanding stops. What if you asked them about the chances of the coin coming up heads twice in a row? I know the answer. They would draw a blank. How about playing cards? What if you asked a simple question like, "what are the chances of drawing a Spade to complete a flush if you already have four Spade cards?" You could appear to complicate the situation by adding that there were four other players in the game. My point is that these are very simple problems and over 95% of people would draw a blank and that is our problem.
I was just watching the news about a lady who had some form of brain cancer and was pregnant. The doctor told the lady that she would die if she did not abort her baby so that he could give her the cancer treatment. The lady rejected the doctor and had her normal baby and did not die. What was the problem in this case? The doctor saw things in terms of black and white or right and wrong when he should have been thinking in terms of probability and advice the lady on those terms rather than right or wrong. Are you starting to see my point?
Look at our current situation with the Eucrain war. You will hear things like, "If we don't stop Russia from taking Eucrain, then they will next take over Europe." They say and believe this with 100% certainty when there are many reasons why this may not happen. You could name a few, like. What if Putin were to die suddenly? What if the army or the country revolted against Putin? What if the soldiers refused to fight? You could go on and on with things that might happen that would stop the war or prevent Russia from expanding further. Each one has a probability of greater than "zero" and it could be smakk, but the simple minded conclusion is clearly not 100%.
I will admit that the whole concept of probability can be complicated, but that is no reason to totally reject the concept.
