The innovation!

Original Article

Before we are carried away by the idea of innovation, let's work on building the basics.

It's a day at the work place. We were dealing with analyzing data. The feeling I had, at the time, is that most people seems to feel that statistics is such a mystery theory that common sense does not apply.

I am a slow thinker but I do think and it's been part of my training to to create something if it haven't been invented. If we apply our common sense to the statistics, we know that it is simply a way of looking into data. There are all kinds of formula in the fields of statistics. But to derive anyone of them, the first thing you have to have is a mathematics model of the data. To be precise, you should always verify your data against the mathematics model you are going to use. After you have verified the model, the general idea of statistics/probability can be derived to explain and check the data.

I would not go into the detail of what we were doing at the time. But this instance made me to think about the ability to innovation that a lot of educators tout about. My favorites is what Edison said about genius. The way I think about this is that if you have learned/stored enough things in your brain, these knowledge will interfered or be checked while you are searching for solution to problems. The better you understand things, the better you can avoid the unlikely solutions and more focused on the good possible solutions. The point I try to make is that before we are carried away by the idea of innovation, let's work on building the basics.