Postcard from Bishkek

Being a former Maths teacher, today has a special significance for me … March 14th – or 3.14 – is designated a Pi Day because the first few digits of that transcendental number are 3.14.

The earliest known commemoration  of the day was in San Fransisco 1988. Although it is an unofficial day, the designation is not officially sponsored by the United Nations, it has gained some recognition; it was apparently recognized in 2009 by a resolution the United States House of Representatives.

Whatever, as is traditional in our office, we’ll have a cake to commemorate the occasion.

For the record: In fact, in a couple of years we’ll have a very special occurrence of Pi Day – March 14th 2015 … after all, π = 3.1415962 …

It just so happens that March 14th is also the birthday of Albert Einstein, (1879-1955), and it is in his honour that today is also designated as International Ask a Question Day … (not to be confused with Ask a Stupid Question Day which takes place in September – usually on the last school day of the month).

I have tried to find out about Ask a Question Day … but although I can find lots of references to the fact that it exists, I can’t find a history of the day, so I have no idea whose idea it was or their motivation.

It seems, however, that they are connected with Einsteins inquisitive mind: he is often quoted as having said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning“.  I suppose, on the other hand, 5th May could have been chosen as that is the birthday of Karl Marx who said: “Question everything”

It seems that Ask a Stupid Question Day was started back in the 1980′s by some school teachers in America in an attempt to try and get their students to take a more active role in their education … asking questions instead of simply sitting back passively soaking up knowledge like a sponge.  Personally, I think that makes sense, as the acquisition of knowledge, skills and experience, (in shore: education), “is not a spectator sport” and to be really effective it needs the active participation of the learner.

 

The six basic questions, of course, are: Who …?, Where …?, When …?, What …?, How …? and Why?, but since I have learned Russian I have discovered that they are some supplementary questions that govern the various cases of grammar, (Kto?, shto?, chevo?, kovo?, komu, chemu? o kem? o chem? … and so on …), but they are basically linguistic instruments and are based on the same set of basic questions.

As a Maths teacher – especially when it came to teaching spreadsheets like Excel, a much more interesting variation of the basic questions is: What if …?

As it happens, there is quite a skill involved in asking questions … and it helps if we prepare ourselves and consider issues like:

• What is the aim of the question? – what are we trying to find out?
• What are the alternatives?
• What would be the best question to ask to elicit the response I want to achieve?
• What assumptions have I made?
• How else can I think about this?
• What am I missing? … What am I avoiding?
• What are the possible outcomes? … what is desired outcome? … what is the likely outcome?

 

For some reason, most people don’t like questions.  I notice that, quite often, when I ask questions people go into defensive mode … and I try to explain that they shouldn’t worry – questions are normal and simply asking for further information … they shouldn’t be problems in themselves – the problems usually arise with the answers, when prove to be insufficient in some way or another.

There are, in fact, several reasons for asking questions.  The obvious one is to gather information – but questions can serve other purposes.  They can provide, for example, challenges and inspiration, or they can help us to organize our thoughts and assist us in planning, making decisions and problem solving; and they can be a useful way of helping us to communicate with others.

There a legal maxim that an advocate in court should never ask a witness question if they don’t know what the answer will be – they could get a nasty surprise … In this case, as it happens, the advocate is not using his questions in order to try and discover something new, but to draw out information and present an argument to advance his case – either for the prosecution or the defence.

In Britain and many countries following the British tradition, there is an institution in Parliament called Question Time when Ministers face and must answer questions put by backbenchers.  Although it is supposed to be unscripted, many politicians use the opportunity to raise issues and concerns as much as to elicit information.

 

Tags: Calendar, Expat