The Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow

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I'm totally recommending this one as a new way of looking at things.
The main memory I have from it (come on it was weeks ago that I read it) is about the tutors at a flight school. A lecturer in education went in and told them that the only way of helping pilots to learn faster was to encourage them. Everything else was useless. They vehemently disagreed. They said that every time they praised their tutees, their performance got worse, and every time they bollocked them they got better. The lecturer went away and thought hard about why this should be. Then he realised the pilots were merely reverting each time to their average performance. If they did particularly well, they would revert to doing less well next time, and if they did badly, they would revert to doing their (average) performance soon enough, bollocking or no bollocking.

This has really killed all the illusions of teaching for me. Ofsted and therefore all Senior Managers want this story "They were at X standard, so I did Y and now they're at 2X". Such crap, although we all know that. I have therefore decided that all I can do is be nice to students and make everyone's life easier. That's it.

(Other than that some really interesting explanations of probability especially the game show question about the prize behind one of three doors).

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