Panel Reflection
Richard told us that the half-life of knowledge in veterinary science is 3 years. I had not thought about knowledge in these terms before, and it is probably true in most disciplines. Knowledge becomes less useful over time, but never completely useless if this exponential concept is correct. This is a good reason to learn skills, processes and methods. However I think knowledge is still valuable, it is very inefficient to have to constantly look up basic concepts when analysing a problem.
One speaker pointed out that some disciplines have a knowledge component while others focus mostly on processes and methods. Other speakers promoted the use of inter-disciplinary collaboration to address complex issues. During this course I am planning to collect the tools that may help to solve complex problems. There were at least seven speakers in the panel today. The complex problem solving tools they mentioned and that particularly grabbed my attention were:
- breaking problems into smaller parts and analysing the details
- viewing problems as systems
- statistics and statistical models
- engaging with other disciplines (collaboration)
- dialogue with stake-holders
Panel Question
I would have liked to ask Kent Anderson to explain why thinking like a lawyer was unique. The problem solving approach he described seemed similar to that used in many other disciplines.
Tutorial Reflection
The one-to-one introductions turned out to be more complicated than Chris anticipated. With 14 people in the room there were 91 introductions to be made, according to the formula in Diffusion Networks (p337).
In the exercise to map the parameters used to deal with complexity in different disciplines, I was interested to see that most groups independently came up with subjective/objective as a category. There was probably a tendency to rate our own disciplines as being more objective.
In preparation for the tutorial we read What are universities for? (Bolton and Lucas). It starts with a selective quote from John Newman’s The Idea of a University. While Newman makes frequent references to church, theology, Catholicism and Christianity in connection to universities, these themes are ignored in the What are universities for? article. Bolton and Lucas say that the purpose of universities is to create and transmit “useful knowledge”. The complex side of this is defining what useful knowledge means. Governments are interested in the immediate economic benefits from university research (p6). Reflecting on this further, and as I raised during the tutorial, there seems little point relying on universities to create economic opportunities if innovators take their technological discoveries overseas where it is easier for them to develop and profit from the innovations.
Connections within this course
As the course progresses we will develop connections back to the ideas presented in Week 1. A list of the tools used to address complexity will be compiled. The tools that occur most often may turn out to be the most useful ones for solving complex problems in general.
Lawrence Cram asked us to think about problem solving. Problem solving is reactive to problems. so perhaps it happens too late for the problem being considered. This prompted me to prefer the use of the term complex issues rather than complex problems in this portfolio.
Connections to other courses
Life Contingencies uses the reductionist approach to solving problems.
Lawrence Cram suggested that arguments don’t always need to be supported by evidence, people also rely on emotionality. This is not a view that I have seen encouraged in Actuarial Statistics.
External Connections
Climate change is an obvious example of an issue that cannot be addressed by a single academic discipline.