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An anatomy of knowledge issues

An anatomy of knowledge issues. Ric Sims Integrating ToK across the Diploma Curriculum Nairobi October 2011 . Terror. Hope (?). Result. Headline?. Is the tendency to smoke inherited?. If parents are smokers does this increase the likelihood that the children become smokers?.

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An anatomy of knowledge issues

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  1. An anatomy of knowledge issues Ric Sims Integrating ToK across the Diploma Curriculum NairobiOctober2011

  2. Terror

  3. Hope (?)

  4. Result

  5. Headline?

  6. Is the tendency to smoke inherited? • If parents are smokers does this increase the likelihood that the children become smokers?

  7. Knowledge issues - observation • Language: how exactly do we define ’smoker’? Once smoked, always smoked, sometimes smoked, 10 a day, 20 a day, 40 a day, only in the evenings? (this is more properly about concepts). Is it sufficient for the definition that just one parent smoked? • How do we extract information from the (messy) real world? Questionnaire? Who do we question (parents or children)? Reliability issues, wording of questionnaire (and so on)

  8. Knowledge issues 2 - representation

  9. Knowledge issues of manipulation • If parents smoking habits did not make a difference we would expect that the proportion of smokers would be the same in both groups (those with smoking parents and those without) • (subtlety here: we assume an hypothesis of no effect and try to disprove it – cf. Popper and falsification) • This proportion is 70/430 = 16.3%

  10. Expected distribution Actual distribution

  11. Model: Chi squared • Given some basic technical assumptions about the base population what is the probability that the observed distribution was achieved by chance? • First we decide on a significance level • We calculate:chi2 = sum of (observed – expected)**2/expected • In this case let us choose 5% significance level (i.e. We shall accept results which could be arrived at randomly from a uniform distribution with probability of 5% or less)

  12. Chi squared • Chi2 = 21. 3 for our results • From the table our results are highly significantthey are even significant at 0.1%meaning that our observed distribution is highly unlikely to come from aneven distribution randomly:i.e. There is a real effecthere

  13. Knowledge issues: interpretation • The mathematical model tells us that there the results are highly correlated (there is a strong correlation between the smoking behaviour of parents and that of their children) • But we need to do further work to establish causation • We would need to posit a mechanism – a piece of theory that uses general principles couched in psychological concepts to explain how one set of behaviours could cause the other

  14. Models

  15. Find a knowledge issue prompted by the following: The Federal Trade Commission has said that advertisers and celebrities who endorse their products are liable for any untruthful statements they make regarding the effectiveness of their products – this includes statements they make on blogs and on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. (Financial Times 6 Oct 2009)

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