One interesting way to teach that kind of thinking could be an “artificial physics” computer game. The program would show you a bunch of virtual components that could be combined in various ways. One goal could be to predict an experiment. So your virtual lab could do every experiment, except experiment X (and maybe some set of very similar experiments.) you have to correctly predict the results of X by spotting the pattern from other experiments.
Alternately, the programmers could have chosen a hypothesis space that contains the correct outcome, and give the player access to a hypothesizing space where they can propose a range of possible explanations, and they win if they can find the correct hypothesis.
For the hypothesis space, I was thinking something like, each component implements some terms in a differential equation. Think like an electrical simulation, with unusual components, and components that don’t actually exist. You know that each wire carries several real numbers, like voltage and current, and each component represents differential equation in terms of those numbers. Like an inductor having the voltage difference across it equal to the rate of change of current through it. But of course, each round of the game gives new silly names, and new random equations, so you have to do experiments to figure out what the rules are this time.
I kinda of agree with this approach, I actually propose it (thought a different program related to biology) in my previous article I posted here.
The reason I haven’t gotten into describing it that much is because it’s not like this is an area where I have a lot of power to influence stuff, my only goal here is to figure out why the failure modes happen to better avoid them myself.
The reason I haven’t gotten into describing it that much is because it’s not like this is an area where I have a lot of power to influence stuff,
I’m not sure that’s the case. If there’s a well thought out concepts about how to teach scientific thinking to kids there’s a chance that someone else puts it into practice if you openly publish it. You don’t need to personally implement it to have influence.
One interesting way to teach that kind of thinking could be an “artificial physics” computer game. The program would show you a bunch of virtual components that could be combined in various ways. One goal could be to predict an experiment. So your virtual lab could do every experiment, except experiment X (and maybe some set of very similar experiments.) you have to correctly predict the results of X by spotting the pattern from other experiments.
Alternately, the programmers could have chosen a hypothesis space that contains the correct outcome, and give the player access to a hypothesizing space where they can propose a range of possible explanations, and they win if they can find the correct hypothesis.
For the hypothesis space, I was thinking something like, each component implements some terms in a differential equation. Think like an electrical simulation, with unusual components, and components that don’t actually exist. You know that each wire carries several real numbers, like voltage and current, and each component represents differential equation in terms of those numbers. Like an inductor having the voltage difference across it equal to the rate of change of current through it. But of course, each round of the game gives new silly names, and new random equations, so you have to do experiments to figure out what the rules are this time.
I kinda of agree with this approach, I actually propose it (thought a different program related to biology) in my previous article I posted here.
The reason I haven’t gotten into describing it that much is because it’s not like this is an area where I have a lot of power to influence stuff, my only goal here is to figure out why the failure modes happen to better avoid them myself.
I’m not sure that’s the case. If there’s a well thought out concepts about how to teach scientific thinking to kids there’s a chance that someone else puts it into practice if you openly publish it. You don’t need to personally implement it to have influence.