Well, I plan to improve my accuracy by learning to perform, not just any old calculation that happens to be suggested by my intuitions, but the calculations which reflect the structure of the situation. Some of our intuitions about what calculations are appropriate could well be wrong.
The calculations are secondary; as I sometimes tell my kids, the nice thing about math is that you’re guaranteed to get a correct answer by performing the operations mechanically, as long as you’ve posed the question properly to start with. How to pose the question properly in the language of math is what I’d like to learn more of.
Someone may have gotten the right answer to Sleeping Beauty by following a flawed argument: I want to be able to check their calculations, and be able to find the answer myself in similar but different problems.
Well, I plan to improve my accuracy by learning to perform, not just any old calculation that happens to be suggested by my intuitions, but the calculations which reflect the structure of the situation. Some of our intuitions about what calculations are appropriate could well be wrong.
The calculations are secondary; as I sometimes tell my kids, the nice thing about math is that you’re guaranteed to get a correct answer by performing the operations mechanically, as long as you’ve posed the question properly to start with. How to pose the question properly in the language of math is what I’d like to learn more of.
Someone may have gotten the right answer to Sleeping Beauty by following a flawed argument: I want to be able to check their calculations, and be able to find the answer myself in similar but different problems.