From: boris@athena.eng.hou.compaq.com (Boris Litinsky)
Subject: USA vs Japan, Education
Organization: Compaq Computer Corp.
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 23:34:02 GMT

I have been following the ongoing discussion about the United States vs Japan
and I have a few of my own comments to share.

1) On Japan
I get the perceptions that people are envious of Japan's success. Has
anyone questioned the price the average Japanese is paying for his/her
country's success? Are their living standards higher and are they living
better then they did before? Would you trade places with someone in Japan?
Would you want to? 

Would you like to work for the same company your whole life; to slave away
that which is most dear to us all - time? I do not envy Japanese; I pity them.
An average Japanese works long, long hours and for what?
A crummy apartment the size of closet.  A few rice dishes? Crowded subways?
Slavery is not dead; it just has a new name. Students commit suicide over
failure to enter a university because failure to do so is dishonorable.
Is this the kind of success we want in the USA? Granted, they have more
money to buy frivolous things. Is that where we extract our happiness?

They may be an economic super power but everything carries a price.
Perhaps, they do not understand the essence of life. Is this success?
To me, living in Japan feels like a nightmare.

I would rather live simply and enjoy the little that I have then to work
myself to death for a bigger auto or a larger house. Time is short
and if one does not pay attention, it will pass you by. The only thing
that I have of any value is time. When, I'm dead, it will not matter that
I owned a big house. I hear Japanese dislike to take vacations. Perhaps,
they are so caught up in work, that life has already passed them by.
If Japanese want to live this way - then let them. I certainly would not
want to wish the success of Japan on any nation. The price is too high.

Many of my ideas come from Thoreau. Please do yourself a favor and read
"Walden" and many of his other essays. The most important questions in our 
life are most often ignored. "What do you hope to achieve in your life?"
Material wealth and happiness are more often then not inversely related.

Everyone wants jobs just like every slave seeks a master. Perhaps, we should
not look for jobs but for a meaningful way to spend our time.


2) On Education
The most important skill for any person to learn is the ability to render
proper judgement using the limited information available. In other words,
logical reasoning with applied statistical knowledge is the cornerstone
of our thinking process. 

Example: I buy my first car. It is Buick Skylark.
	 The transmission fails in 2 months.

a) All cars are unreliable
b) All American cars are  unreliable
c) Buicks are unreliable
d) Skylark is an unreliable model
e) Transmissions are unreliable in all cars
f) I am unlucky
g) Not enough information to render a verdict.

What would be your judgement? If one had to buy another auto, would you buy
a Skylark?

The correct response is g). Why? There are hundreds of thousands Skylarks
on the road. I have tried 1/100,000 so the sample size is too small to 
render an "accurate" future prediction as to the reliability of other Skylarks.

Believe it or not, many people that I have conversed with would pick
a - f. I cannot say that all people are like that. Only the few that I've
spoken with.
 
"To generalize without a valid statistical sample (proof) is 
 too make a 'bad' judgement. "

Some generalizations that I often hear:
 "Sony's are very reliable."
 "GM makes unrelaible cars"

These generalizations are very imprecise. What is relaible? .01% failure?
Generalizations usually end up saying absolutely nothing.

I see and hear this all the time and sometimes am myself guilty of this
reasoning.

Information by itself is useless unless it can be applied to render a
better decision. To what good is learning in history books that the
Prohibition started on this date and ended on this date? (aside from
pure trivial interest) ?
The most important question that is often completely missed by history books
is: what can we learn from these people's decisions? If a similar situation
occurred, what actions should one take?  

Teaching logical reasoning should be the #1 priority ot schools because it
is what we do on a day to day basis. This a necessary skill for making
the most logical judgements.

I know people who have gone to college and beyond and still lack any
understanding of applied statistics. It just goes to show, logical
reasoning and the level of education are not necessarily correlated.

What does it all mean? If Japanese did not learn this skill any better
then Americans, then it will not matter that they have more general knowledge.
I can do triple integrals in my head and do square roots without calculator -
does this make me more intelligent? 

No flames please.

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Disclaimer:

The views are my own and not of my employer.
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--
| Boris Litinsky	          "I came to the woods to live deliberately,  |
| ASIC Design Engineer 	          "so that when it came time to die, I did    |
| boris@athena.eng.hou.compaq.com "not learn that I have not lived." -Thoreau |
| "The views expressed here are my own, and not those of my employer."	      |
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