What I'm doing.

I was just reading an article and the author explains the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning before getting into how statistics are used incorrectly much of the time. I understand that there are people who don't know this distinction and need to be educated and not only doesn't this unnecessary lesson bother me, I read it to see how the author contrives to explains things and to get to what follows.

When writing, however, I'd assume my readers knew the difference, and that if I'd added an explaination, my reader would get impatient or even insulted at my assumption that she didn't know this already. Sometimes I feel like anything I might write would fall into the "everyone already knows that" category.

I hate what I call the culture of assertion where experts proclaim stuff. I understand that people would change the channel from a guy saying "we don't really know what happened" to listen to the guy who tells them what took place in great detail, even when much of it turns out later to have been incorrect. I remember hearing on the radio, on 9/11, some announcer saying with great assurance that it was an accident with a private plane and not terrorism. I'll bet no one lost their job over that broadcast made when no one knew yet what had actually happened.

If you go on a job interview, and they ask how you'd solve a problem, do you imagine you would get the job if you answer, "I'd ask my colleagues for help." because you've shown you're a team player?

So, let me assert right now that I don't know what I'm doing.