"Junk" Science LO21655

Robert Bacal (rbacal@escape.ca)
Mon, 17 May 1999 22:00:15 +0000

Replying to LO21623 --

On 14 May 99 at 5:23, John Zavacki wrote:

> Proponents of W.E. Deming (a group in which I claim membership)
> would smile at the fifty percent figure. Dr. Deming believed that
> in all systems, including education and government, fifty percent of
> behaviors are below the mean and fifty percent above. That, of
> course, is one of the characteristics of the normal distribution, a
> descriptive statistic, not a probablistic one.

Interesting the responses to T.J. Elliot's posts. Haven't seen a
response that commented on the "developmental" part, which I suppose
illustrates how our mental models help us project meaning onto
things.

When I was in grad school there was a beginning interest in
evaluating the degree to which adults achieved Piaget's formal
operations stage, a pre-requisite (theoretically) for dealing with
both abstractions and more complex moral reasoning. At that time the
research suggested---guess what--that only about 50% of adults
reached that as a developmental stage.

One theory of developmental stages is they are at least somewhat
genetically (or developmentally) determined. Hence the hypothesis
that it can't be taught since for some percentage of people there is
a ceiling to their development in that area.

If this line of thinking is correct, it accounts for much of what
happens in our world.

Robert Bacal, http://performance-appraisal.8m.com
Join the Performance Management/Appraisal discussion group

-- 

"Robert Bacal" <rbacal@escape.ca>

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