"What I will say is that high-school teachers need to have more
than a high-school education. That's so that they can ascertain
what should be taught as the /foundation/ for further work, and
ascertain what to avoid because it is nonsense that will have to
be unlearned later."
I agree. However, I can relate to Rick's point as well:
"My answer is that these ARE high school students--and high school teachers. All of the experimental and statistical subtleties that John brings up are beyond the HS curriculum."
Here is how I do it. The level of discussion regarding uncertainty analysis depends on the group. I have two presentations on propagating error/uncertainty: the first one is required by the IB exams and contains typical HS rules of thumb. The second presentation is introduced if I feel that my students are up to it. It makes use
of partial derivatives and discusses assuptions underlying the Least Square Fit and so on (still elementary but a bit more demanding
than the first take). Sometimes I might tutor an individual student into this direction. Sometimes it is no use teaching more than is
required by the syllabus; it would just distract students who
struggle with basic stuff.
(And yes, I have taken courses on statistics: one in physics dept, one in math dept., and several in stat. dept.)
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This reminds me of our old discussion on centrifugal force. It is a no-no in HS physics meaning that a student is penalized in the (external) exams if he/she uses it e.g. in solving a problem. Of course, it does not harm students if they are told a bit about centrifugal force/inertial forces in the context of non-inertial frames once they are comfortable with forces in inertial frames.
It might harm them if they leave HS with the belief that centrifugal force is evil and should be avoided at any cost :-).
Regards,
Antti Savinainen
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