Tag Archives: measurements

School and measuring intelligence

A few months back I saw a video from a very articulate young girl who goes by Gluten Free Runner on TikTok. I liked the video but didn’t follow her. She just came back on my feed again and her recent video definitely earned her a follow.

She asks, “What if the way we measure intelligence is completely missing the point?” And then she reads a journal entry she wrote about school. I don’t want to say much about it other than please listen to it.

The description shared on the video says this:

“There’s a concept recently learned about called Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.

We’ve optimized what can be measured: grades, test scores, credentials, things like that.

Maybe part of the issue is that we started treating those measurements as the thing itself, instead of just rough indicators of something much more complex.

Maybe the goal of education shouldn’t be to decide who is “smartest,” per se, but to help people understand how they can best contribute.”

Here is her video: https://www.tiktok.com/@gluten.free.runne/video/7649444429090000142

My favourite part is her questioning if we are being educated or schooled? “Education is a process. Schooling is an institution.

No notes… just go watch her video.

Canadian measurements

I saw this very funny post on social media:

Americans: I use miles and pounds

Europeans: I use kilometres and kilograms

Canadians: [snorting a line of assorted measuring systems] I’m 5’8, I weigh 150lbs, horses weigh 1000kgs, my house is an hour away and I drive 80 km/h to get there, I need a cup of flour and 1L of milk.

What amazes me is that despite living in 2 worlds, with a mix of pounds and kilograms, miles and kilometres, Fahrenheit and Celsius, I am absolutely useless at converting between these measurements. It’s 20° outside, I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit. I heat my wife’s latte milk to 170°, I have no idea what that is in Celsius. My wife’s weight scale is in kilograms and no matter how many time I weigh myself on it, I need Siri to convert it to pounds for me.

You’d think that I’d learn, but no, I just blindly choose the system of measurement that I’m used to and am completely oblivious to the conversion to any other system.

Am I the only one?