Ifound two videos which illustrate the importance of emotions and perception in understanding statistics. In the first video, the speaker Hans Rosling uses animated graphs to visualize the development of different countries. It is a powerful illustration on how a visual representation (sense perception!) of numbers in the form of colorful dots greatly helps in understanding statistics. Tables with numbers alone are too difficult to perceive. Rosling’s computer program makes these numbers accessible.

The second video is quite remarkable as well. It links the areas of knowledge arts, statistics (math), with the ways of knowing sense perception and emotions. The photographer Chris Jordan wants to create impact by visualizing very large numbers and thus causing emotional involvement. We people often do not want to act to improve our environment, for example, becasue the numbers and statistics that we have available are simply to abstract and too large. What does it mean, when we say that we use millions of paper cups every day? How much is a million? Is this a lot? How much is a lot? Chris Jordan’s artwork helps us in perceiving these numbers, this way causing emotional involvement and creating an incentive to act.

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I found the following video, which I would like to recommend as an introduction into Ethics. It is from Harvard University, the lecturer is Michael Sandel. The lecture covers Utilitarianism and the Categorical Imperative and is very understandable. The lecture is very interactive and engaging (both for the audience and for the person viewing the video). The video addresses the classical ethical dilemma of a trolley which is about to crash into a group of 5 people. Would you steer the trolley to a side track on which there is only one person standing?

The complete series contains 12 videos, each one about 1 hour long. Here is a link to the series on youtube.
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I would like to recommend the following videos for the TOK course. They are in German, and if you happen to understand this language, then I think you should watch them, because they directly address TOK topics, especially relating to the Area of Knowledge Science.

The videos (each one 15 min. long) can be seen online, but it is not possible to download them. You may need to install RealPlayer. The show alpha-Centauri was produced by the Bayrischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting) and was also aired on television. The host of the show, Prof. Harald Lesch, is an Astrophysicist and Philosopher and works at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). Continue reading »