indexed

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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'.

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.

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

love it

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

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

Ahh... Socrates...

Where does Donald Rumsfeld fit on the AC graph?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Ain't that the truth!

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

This is one of my favorite ones!