Archive for Baccalauréat

philosophy at the 2015 Baccalauréat

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2015 by xi'an

[Here is the pre-Bayesian quote from Hume that students had to analyse this year for the Baccalauréat:]

The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings, is, that the objects, of which we have no experience, resembles those, of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree; yet in advancing farther, the mind observes not always the same rule; but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous, it rather the more readily admits of such a fact, upon account of that very circumstance, which ought to destroy all its authority. The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived.” David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,

Vivons-nous pour être heureux ? [bacc. 2014]

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , on June 20, 2014 by xi'an

examen (C.) L. Marin This year is my daughter’s final year in high school and she is now taking the dreaded baccalauréat exams. Just like a few hundred thousands French students. With “just like” in the strict sense since all students with the same major take the very same exam all over France… The first written composition is in the “mother of all disciplines”, philosophy, and the theme of one dissertation this year was “do we live to be happy?”. Which suited well my daughter as she was hoping for a question around that theme. She managed to quote Plato and Buddha, The Pursuit of Happiness and The Wolf of Wall-street… So sounded happy enough with her essay. This seemed indeed like a rather safe notion (as opposed to ethics, religion, politics or work), with enough material to fill a classical thesis-antithesis-synthesis plan (and my personal materialistic conclusion about the lack of predetermination in our lifes).

Bayes at the Bac’ [again]

Posted in Kids, Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2014 by xi'an

When my son took the mathematics exam of the baccalauréat a few years ago, the probability problem was a straightforward application of Bayes’ theorem.  (Problem which was later cancelled due to a minor leak…) Surprise, surprise, Bayes is back this year for my daughter’s exam. Once again, the topic is a pharmaceutical lab with a test, test with different positive rates on two populations (healthy vs. sick), and the very basic question is to derive the probability that a person is sick given the test is positive. Then a (predictable) application of the CLT-based confidence interval on a binomial proportion. And the derivation of a normal confidence interval, once again compounded by  a CLT-based confidence interval on a binomial proportion… Fairly straightforward with no combinatoric difficulty.

The other problems were on (a) a sequence defined by the integral

\int_0^1 (x+e^{-nx})\text{d}x

(b) solving the equation

z^4+4z^2+16=0

in the complex plane and (c) Cartesian 2-D and 3-D geometry, again avoiding abstruse geometric questions… A rather conventional exam from my biased perspective.

do novel writers need to make exceptional beings of their characters?

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2013 by xi'an

In the French literature part of the baccalauréat exam my daughter (and 170,000 other French students) took on Tuesday, the essay was about the above. It was quite a congenial theme and she seems to have enjoyed the opportunity to review her favourite books to argue the point. (She however declined to write a shorter version for the ‘Og, even in French..!) I wish I had time to expand on this, as it is a fairly rich field for arguing both ways, from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Dumas’ D’Artagnan to Melville’s Bartelby and Raymond Carver‘s characters (who often even remain unnamed). Opposing Flaubert’s Emma Bovary and Maupassant’s Jeanne for instance. Although my daughter considered Emma was in the “ordinary” camp… And discussing the characters in The Grapes of Wrath since this was one of the included texts. In my conclusion, despite advices not to answer the question in a definitive manner, I would however lean towards the quantum physics analogy that writers impact on the exceptional nature of their characters, since they become exceptional if only by appearing in the novel… (Check a mediocre online correction.)

Bayes on the radio (regrets)

Posted in Books, Kids, Running, Statistics with tags , , , , , on November 13, 2012 by xi'an

While running this morning I was reconsidering (over and over) my discussion of Bayes’ formula on the radio and thought I should have turned the presentation of Bayes’ theorem differently. I spent much too much time on the math side of Bayes’ formula and not enough on the stat side. The math aspect is not of real importance as it is a mere reformulation of conditional probabilities. The stat side is what matters as introducing a (prior) distribution on the parameter (space) is the #1 specificity of Bayesian statistics…. And the focus point of most criticisms, as expressed later by the physicist working on the Higgs boson, Dirk Zerwas.

I also regret not mentioning that Bayes’ formula was taught in French high schools, as illustrated by the anecdote of Bayes at the bac. And not reacting at the question about Bayes in the courtroom with yet another anecdote of Bayes’ formula been thrown out of the accepted tools by an English court of appeal about a year ago. Oh well, another argument for sticking to the written world.