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GROUNDER

                                                  November 10, 2013

    "Many thousands of university students
    have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle,            FAST_SLOW_AND_SLOWER
    and the results are shocking.  More than
    50% of the students at Harvard, MIT, and
    Princeton gave the intuitive--
    incorrect-- answer.  At less selective
    universities, the rate of demonstrable
    failure to check was in excess of 80%."

       -- Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (2011), p.45 (hardcover)


I find that less shocking and more reassuring:
there's actually a measureably *difference*
between the students of the Good Schools and
the not-so-good.
                                                     TEACHING_THE_TEST
And the "bat-and-ball" puzzle is simple enough
that I'm willing to conceed everyone should get
it, particularly everyone who's been taught
some algebra.
                          
I also agree with Kahneman's point that you
really should wonder why someone asked such
an apparently simple question: getting fooled
is understandable, not thinking twice and
looking for the trick, that's the real failure.


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