[ATM] Re:books, Internet, quality information.

[charlesmitchard at iinet.net.au (Charles Mitchard)]

Greetings all,
in my day job as a teacher I come across the dilemma of what to believe 
every day.
The majority of my students cannot decide what is or is not "real" or 
"quality" information.
One of the lessons I try to instill is to severely question the sources. 
Seek out who or what organisation is presenting the information and wether 
or not that organisation or person has any other agenda to push. Does that 
particular publisher only produce fringe material? Sometimes this is self 
evident, other times it is exceedingly difficult or impossible to seek out.
The internet is a wonderful place to publish any old junk as it is 
virtually cost free, any entity can present (with only the most spurious of 
evidence if at all) any point or fact as a gospel truth.
There are a plethora of books published that contain huge amounts of "junk" 
pushing some point or another.
Even respected scientists have "fudged" results to comply with their 
preconceived notions. (They eventually get found out but damage is still 
done for what is often a long time)
The trick in these information rich times is to cross check as much as 
possible with as many (quality) sources as possible and if feasible, run 
the tests/experiments yourself.
Like running formulae with known variables to get the already known answer 
as a self check.


> > I repeat my previous post:  "...books are usually reviewed for content and
> > accuracy..."  Note the use of the word 'usually.'  Yes, there are errors
> > in ATM books.  However I often find a higher S/N ratio in books than I do
> > in email forums.

Yes, I usually find this as well, but the quality of the signal can still 
be very high. If I give an answer in an email forum I will usually state 
"this is what worked for me" or something similar, particularly if I know 
it is different to published material.
The old adage "there is more than one way to skin a cat" still holds true, 
however, far too many prefer to only believe in one single method.


>Even many die hard computer geeks think the computer is a bad 'page 
>turner'.  It
>isn't the same reading experience.

And yet our masters who hold the purse strings insist that self paced 
computer based training works fine.
It may for a few but the majority learn better from face to face or/and 
from books.
How many of us have lost that excellent web site address? More than have 
lost the book I suspect.

I think it matters not where we get the information from but that we filter 
what we receive and be as logical as possible when applying those filters.

best regards
Charles

Keep an open mind, but not so open that everything falls through.

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