Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Humbling.

29 comments:

Unknown said...

And only the best of us are willing to admit "C"

b said...

Yes, it is. Doesn't make traversing A any less fun or rewarding.

Anonymous said...

Actually the relationship of A to B should be linear and the relationship of A to C more strongly exponential.

Orri said...

Hmm. I would say it's more like "C = Things you realize you don't know," unless you're referring to things forgotten, or something like that.

Anonymous said...

orri, that extra 'know' comes from the saying "The more you know, the more you know what you don't know." At least I think its a saying; my father used to tell me that a lot when I was a kid.

Anonymous said...

Sam, the relationship between A and B is clearly nowhere near linear. Linear is something like what you get without education. On the other hand, you're quite right that the growth of C dominates it.

paustin said...

I think the A-C curve is probably shaped more like a lower case n, with 0 values at 6th grade and PhD.

(x, why?) said...

The more you know, the more you know that there is to learn.

David Malloy said...

I think the second graph should be shaped like a "V" because there is a point in our education, when we transition from High School to College where we feel soooooo much smarter than other people because we're at college!

But once you get a few semesters of college under your belt, you do realize how little you actually know!

Anonymous said...

I think this is my favorite so far, I have had many conversation about this and well, people just don't want to believe it.

Anonymous said...

i would second "i am the professor" and add that the C graph should skyrocket upon entering grad school!

Anonymous said...

Given a finite set of things to know, the AC line can not be exponential. Consider this, knowing that you don't know some things is in itself knowledge so the more things you know you don't know, the steeper the slope of AB. A person with a very steep AB would be very smart. However a person with a shallow AB will tend to know there is more stuff not known causing AC and AB to increase from that knowledge (thus becoming smarter). Therefore I conclude that highly educated individuals that know they are dummies are the smartest among us.

flyzipper said...

The most debatable portion of this post is the notion that 'things you know' increases with 'education'. Unless you're using 'education' in the most generic sense, it's more accurate for 'A' to simply be 'knowledge'.

Anonymous said...

Sam, I agree that the AB graph shouldn't be exponential, but I think it would be more accurately portrayed as logarithmic. Just thinking about it, the first things you learn about most topics are the basis of the things you learn later about the subject.

Mr. Webb Science Teacher said...

Jessica, you are brilliant, I just got through looking at your work!!!thanks for making me laugh.

robert said...

love it

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of this one from PhD Comics http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1056

Anonymous said...

Ahh... Socrates...

Anonymous said...

Where does Donald Rumsfeld fit on the AC graph?

Anonymous said...

Please put this one on a t-shirt, Jessica!

Rashwan said...

Jessica, I agree with Amanda... Putting this on a t-shirt is a great idea ... At least it will send a message to those who think they know everything about anything... Great illustration

Anonymous said...

I've also heard this idea described as a single circle: What you know you know is inside the circle, what you don't know you don't know is outside the circle, and what you know you don't know is the line separating the inside and outside of the circle.

Unknown said...

This looks freakishly like something I drew for my math teacher earlier today -- the sad bit is that this is totally true.

ultra.c00l said...

This is in absolute agreement with Dunning-Kruger effect and my views..

Anonymous said...

Rather than Humbling, I prefer to think of it as Exciting! After all, if you didn't know there were things you didn't know, you might eventually suspect that you knew everything. Things would quickly become boring after that, or worse.

Guinea Pig said...

Ain't that the truth!

Anonymous said...

So this explains the saying "ignorance is bliss"? :-)

Unknown said...

This is one of my favorite ones!

 
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