You're not an equation - A MUST READ AND A MUST THINK!

EMANUEL DERMAN, in http://bigthink.com/ideas/39320
What’s The Big Idea?
Math – and anything that sounds like math – is seductive, for two reasons. First, because it has the ring of immutable truth. Second, because it intimidates the vast majority of people into uncomprehending submission.
The more sophisticated our data-gathering and data-crunching tools become, the greater the temptation to rely on mathematical models to represent and reshape our society. From Wall Street to neuroimaging to data-driven school reform, we are becoming increasingly reliant on objective-looking formulae to explain the slippery complexity of human nature.*
Emanuel Derman is a Quant, one of the shadowy legion of mathematicians on whose models Wall Street relies to make trading decisions. Overreliance on such models, which Derman and others have argued are insufficient to explain human financial behavior, played a major role in bringing about the 2008 crisis from which the world’s markets are still reeling.

In finance, people built models that use mathematics to describe markets and to describe  people and the participants in the markets. And it becomes tempting for them to believe   that the mathematics is a theory and forget that it’s actually an analogy [i.e. model] that   only has limited extension.

It looks a lot like physics, but it doesn’t work anywhere near to the same effect at all. I   mean, not even approximately. So I don’t know, I think the world’s still waiting for some   good way to model human behavior which doesn’t rely on an analogy with physics.

Unlike most Quants, Derman started out as a promising theoretical physicist, earning his doctorate from Columbia in 1973. In physics, he says, mathematical theories (not models) are used to describe some aspect of the behavior of the universe. There is, for example, an inch-long equation that explains the behavior of an electron within an atom with dizzying accuracy.

Models, on the other hand, are a kind of mathematical metaphor. “The Efficient Market Model,” for example, hallowed on Wall Street before the collapse, “pretends, loosely speaking, that stock prices and security prices behave like smoke diffusing through a room when you give a puff on a cigarette.” As it happens, they don’t. 
 While freely admitting that his Latin is stronger than his Greek, Derman has coined the term pragmamorphism to describe our tendency to define people in terms of inanimate things – IQ tests, magnetic brain scans, income. Pragmamorphic thinking, says Derman, is dangerous because it creates a one-or-two-dimensional representation of a multidimensional phenomenon – human behavior – and presents that as the whole story.
What’s the Significance?

Mathematical models themselves are not responsible for the financial meltdown. But our overreliance on them is, in large part. In every area of society – education, law, government, parenting – the “soft science” of mathematical modeling, coupled with our tendency to trust it as definitive, is exerting an increasing influence on how we tackle difficult questions. Just glance at any weekend Science section of any major newspaper for concrete, definitive parenting advice based upon one correlative study.
A recent Big Think article addressed the “data-driven school reform” going on in New Jersey and elsewhere. Its proponents argue that a centralized database of student information based largely on test scores will give teachers and administrators a much clearer picture of what’s going on in classrooms, enabling them to make better teaching and hiring decisions. Its opponents (many of whom wrote to us eloquently in response to the article) argue that woefully imperfect tests and data will lead to the firing of good teachers and the misallocation of resources – that mathematical approaches will exacerbate the woes of public education rather than ending them.
Derman brings up a recent op-ed by Richard Dawkins, a public intellectual and evolutionary biologist:
He wrote saying that they should have kept Saddam Hussein around and not executed him, not out of kindness, but because it would have been so interesting to examine him and try to figure out what caused him to become the sort of monster that he was. And I   think that’s kind of pragmamorphic in a way. You have to be kind of naive to imagine that   questioning or sending Hitler to a psychiatrist, even unwillingly, he’s going to let you   discover how you should bring up your kids.

Derman's warning is powerfully relevant at this moment in history. Faced with the undeniable global and personal anxieties that characterize our age, we should be deeply skeptical of premature solutions based on science that cannot yet deliver what its sales representatives promise.

Citations

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
 “…the mark of a free man is that ever-gnawing inner uncertainty as to whether or not he is right.” — Judge Learned Hand
 “[A community organizer] must constantly examine life, including his own, to get some idea of what it is all about, and he must challenge and test his own findings…To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations our society presents.” — Saul Alinsky
 “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell
 “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire

Formative assessment

For those who might be new to the term, formative assessments are ongoing practices that help both the teacher and student evaluate and reflect on how they are both doing, and what changes either or both might need to make to become a more effective teacher and learner (I’d love it if someone left a comment with a better definition). I use a lot of these in my classroom, ranging from regular cloze (fill-in-the-blank) and reading fluency assessments, to “show me with thumbs,” to observations. I feel that I use them pretty effectively, but also feel that I could do a better job applying what I learn from them in the classroom.
 Again, for people who are new to these terms, formative assessments are often contrasted with summative assessments. Summative assessments are the mid-term and final exams, benchmarks, and state tests that we give. They’re designed to, at least theoretically, tell us what a student has learned and what she/he hasn’t learned.
 Formative assessments are generally considered more useful to teachers, which is why I’m thinking about them. To quote Robert Marzano from The Art and Science of Teaching, formative assessments “might be one of the more powerful weapons in a teacher’s arsenal.”

Larry Ferlazzo, The Best Resources For Learning About Formative Assessment, August 22, 2010
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/08/22/the-best-resources-for-learning-about-formative-assessment/

Super Bowl

A man had 50 yard line tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sits down, a man comes down and asks if anyone is sitting in the seat next to him.

"No," he says, "The seat is empty."

"This is incredible," said the man. "Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in the world, and not use it?"

He says, "Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first Super bowl we haven't been to together since we got married in 1967."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible. But couldn't you find someone else-a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?".

The man shakes his head.

"No, they're all at the funeral."