The half life of Knowledge
From Tim Lauer:
via theonino.com
In what Major League Baseball officials are calling a “long overdue correction of a gross oversight,” Commissioner Bud Selig announced Tuesday the discovery that Hall of Famer Hank Aaron had in fact accumulated 50 previously unaccounted-for home runs during his illustrious 22-year baseball career, bringing his once record total of 755 to an even higher 805 and putting the all-time home-run record perhaps forever out of reach.
We talk about the half life of knowledge and how half of what we know today will be out of date in three years in some fields of study. Well, baseball is no different. No the half life of this knowledge is a little over 3 years :). But in the end what we use to know is no longer what we know. Although this little piece of knowledge doesn’t impact what I teach, or my students on a daily basis it still goes to show that you can’t stop learning. I just keep thinking about all the signs that have to be changed. Think of all the ballparks, the baseball hall of fame, and all the record books that now need to be changed, reprinted or scratched out. Not even the national pass time can escape the changing face of knowledge.
[tags]baseball, halflife[/tags]
Technorati Tags: baseball, Hank Aaron, halflife
Unfortunately, I think a few people have been duped here… The Onion is a well know satirical/parody news site. Although its’ tagline is “America’s Finest News Source”, it doesn’t necessarily make it true. I don’t really know if the link by Tim and discussion by you was in fact meant to be a conversation on the state of statistics and baseball or a funny link, but reading the story and a few other “headlines” should confirm to any reader the site is meant as parody. (Headlines this week: “Thirsty Mayor Drinks Town’s Entire Water Supply”, “Prince William Fells Prince Willem-Alexander Of The Netherlands In Crucial Joust” and a great one for all bloggers out there “Extra-Slanty Italics Introduced For Extremely Important Words”) It just proves that if adult consumers of the internet can be duped by a well written/ produced site, our students will surely need help in developing internet literacy skills in order to be able to interpret fact from fiction.