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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In this episode, I’ll be exploring the relationship between arts and ethics. Some time ago, I read an interesting news report, one which links the two areas of knowledge Arts and Ethics. It’s about an unusual art exhibition. The artist placed 10 kitchen blenders on a long table. The blenders have sharp rotating knives and are normally used to smash vegetables or fruit. But in this case, each one of the blenders contained a live little gold fish swimming in some water. The visitors of the museum now had the choice of turning on the blenders – or not. The visitor, essentially, became the “rulers of the decision on life and death”, too use the words of the artist. According to news reports, some visitors indeed turned on the blenders, killing the fish, making fish soup. Animal rights activists complained, of course, and the police started to get involved as well.

When I first read about this art exhibition, I had to ask myself several questions.

• Must art provoke? Is it necessary for good art to provoke emotions and a discussion?

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I recently read an interesting poem by the German poet and playwright Berthold Brecht – a poem which got me thinking. You see, this is one of the TOK illnesses, you start to see TOK everywhere, and also in poetry.
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The identification of a problem of knowledge in the prescribed TOK essay title is probably one of the most important first steps. But it may also be one of the most difficult tasks. What is the problem of knowledge that is implied in the title? How can one identify it? It may not always be necessary to identify an implied problem of knowledge in the prescribed title, but it may be helpful in structuring the essay.

“[Mathematics] is a creative art because mathematicians create beautiful new concepts; it is a creative art because mathematicians live, act, and think like artists; and it is a creative art because mathematicians regard it so” (Paul Richard Halmos)

– To what extent can this view of art, beauty and creativity be applied to other areas of knowledge? Continue reading »