Meditations

[The Kakama]

I assume not a lot is said on the middle of the book

No one cares about the middle of the book. Say, you want to reading a 100 page book, you just copy the blurb at the back for the synopsis instead.

[The Abacus]

What is done with the points?

[borys610]

Just stop language topic, I fucked up, no reason to solace me. And criticize Vurn.

For second... all this don't make much sense, as children shouldn't read for points, but for fact of reading. We had similar program in our old school. It was even worst, as you needed to take books from school library. Which is stupid as people who are reading books in most cases have their own books, or they're taking them from normal libraries.

[Vortex]

I'm afraid there just aren't a lot of effective ways to encourage kids to read, especially if they aren't good in language. As an example, we have a NILAM program by schools, which awards points to kids for reading books, where 1 point=1 book. The problem is how to prove the kids actually read the books because some of them are obviously going to lie about their actual number. So, they give this book, and kids have to write the book title, book publisher, author, number of pages, synopsis etc. in the book.
All this teaches kids is to copy all that from the first and last pages of the book. And it's going to be a lot easier to do the synopsis for a simple book, so the bulk of their points are going to come from your 5-20 page books.

Yeah, that program is flawed from the beginning... I don't even know how it could go approved o_o

[Raxas]

If you think that's bad, the entire educational system is built around learning for points instead of the sake of learning.

[zombyrus]

I don't think that is quite what Occam's Razor is actually. As you've said, what is simplest? Simplest could be "because God did it." Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation: "The razor states that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power." It is that later half that gets forgotten oh so often. I think it is better to think of the Razor as "creating theories that fit all the categories of the problem." If you answer more than the categories of the problem, you violate it one way, but if you oversimplify, something I believe we do VERY often, you violate it the other way.

I'm not gonna lie, my definition of Occam's Razor came from a Dilbert comic from like 1995, so now that I think about it it was almost sure to be inaccurate. So the actual rule is basically that an explanation should be as simple as it can be while still explaining the problem in the necessary depth?

[Redafro]

I believe so, yes. It is just a guide though, but a good one. A lot of people treat it as a fallacy, but it isn't quite that.

[Rooster5man]

I've thought Occam's Razor was somewhat Sherlock Holmes's phrase:

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

In Occam's Razor, you eliminate the impossible in order to come up with the simplest explanation. Even when the simplest explanation may be improbable, it still may be the answer.

[The Kakama]

I think, improbability and complexity are two different aspects.
Both ideas are not the same, but should work in combination.

[Vortex]

I think Occam's razor principle is near to what Redafro said. I see it as a statistical principle: what is more probable, "Tomorrow it will rain" or "Tomorrow it will rain at 15:00"? The first one covers more cases, so it is more likely to happen. In the best of cases (if you know that beyond all doubt, if it rains tomorrow, it necessarily will rain at 15:00), the two assertments are equally probable. So it will be always better to choose the most simple one. But here "simple" just refers to "covering more possible cases", not simple to understand, or expressed with few words, or anything like that.

And of course, as Redafro pointed out, if you oversimplify it you end up with things like "Tomorrow something will happen", that covers virtually all the cases but is completely useless.