ofsted forum oct_15_2014

Philip MoriartySchool of Physics & Astronomy

University of Nottingham

philip.moriarty@nottingham.ac.uk@Moriarty2112

www.nottingham.ac.uk/physics/research/nano

Lies, damned lies, and Ofsted’s pseudostatistics

The day job: Research

Condensed matter physicist Single atom/molecule

imaging and manipulation

Condensed matter physicist Single atom/molecule

imaging and manipulation

The day job: Research

The day job: Teaching

Measurements without uncertainties/error bars “not even wrong”

Not everything that counts…

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/

Beyond the ivory tower…

http://icingonthecakeblog.weebly.com/blog

WTF?!

Measuring success?

…and universities are no better.

The normal distributionThe normal distribution

But marks aren’t necessarily But marks aren’t necessarily normally distributed…normally distributed…

Consider

0, 50, 100

49, 50, 51

……and neither are many other and neither are many other things in lifethings in life

The central limit theoremThe central limit theorem