the statistics of wisdom
we're working on simple regressions in stat class, trying to fit a function to the data of a population. of course, often we can speak only theoretically about a perfect fit line- in reality, we deal with paramaters concluded from limited data, and a certain amount of 'disturbance' or 'noise' or 'randomness' which accounts for/causes the deviation of our data points from those that would occur/that our model would predict.
(to see a picture, go to http://rchsbowman.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/042809-2355-1.png)
It strikes me that this is a good metaphor for the way we mature and develop wisdom, defined as an understanding of how life works.
The two simple paramaters that we endeavor to determine are slope and intercept (in linear regression). Starting from the y-intercept the best slope attempts to run the closest path to the data points. I think as we go along life's path we make little adjustments in trying to navigate that best fit line; sometimes, however, perhaps after considering a new outlying data sample, we make radical changes, as if to change the intercept, change our whole point of departure. As we grow wiser, we decrease the significance of disturbance factors and internalize more parameters, ie determining factors. The result is gradual improvements and an occasional paradigm shift that models the data much more lucidly. Perhaps moments of greatest enlightenment represent a perfect understanding of all data points.
No comments:
Post a Comment