How do we know what we say is true?

Some people, in some conditions, are good at the prediction game. I will pick out a few lessons under two headings: the people and the process.

Can we predict? What are the rules of predicting? How do we know whether something is true?

Being clearer about the decisions we make, finding out if those decisions helped us get to where we wanted to go, and using the learning to make better decisions in the future. Is this core to how we want to think about learning?

In Era 3. What do we mean by data? What do we mean by outcomes? What do we mean change and change mechanism?

To me, the machine is able to analyse the world as it is. Not a world with linear progression from bad to good on a single variable, but a world where some things are good, somethings are bad, and there is a lot of fluctuation from one moment to another.

The machine was picking up on context not directly relevant to the therapy that strongly influenced the young person’s progress. Some examples.

I want to draw out what the machine says about how we learn.

The machine will see things we don’t see. We will see things the machine doesn’t see. Ergo. Let’s make friends with a machine.

When I was studying evidence based programmes, I kept coming across an interesting phenomenon.

This bit of the conversation is about the transition from Era 2 to Era 3, and how machine learning helps us to think about that transition.

So what are the gaps (not just in Rutter’s work but in all era 2 work of this type)?

Arguably the strongest contribution of this new way of thinking, this second era thinking, was in the analysis of impact.

When we agree on the definition we can begin to understand cause.

The starting point is epidemiology, the study of disease, its origins and sequelae.

One boy says to the other, ‘what are you in for then?’, generating the reply, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t got any problems’. To which the more experienced resident says, ‘Well you better get some quick otherwise you will never get out of here’.

Me in place, and the place in me.

Charles Booth drew the poverty maps of London, a detailed house by house assessment, marking the map of the most impoverished in black and the most wealthy in yellow.

We sit at a meeting and when somebody says ‘placed based system reform’ we all nod our heads as if we have a shared understanding of what that means. We don’t.

The settlement movement is the embodiment of place based work, fitting exactly with the definition proposed at the February meeting.

We began this series of meetings without a specific goal. Our interest is in how we learn. We are using place and scale as exemplars.

A child measures positive for a conduct disorder. Mark it 1. A child is dyslexic. Another 1. An addict. 1. A homeless person. A lonely person. Each a 1.

Does place mean anything you want it to mean?

Individual risks are still important but Pinker's work encourages the tending of the space around the individual. Here are some examples of the idea in action.

The story told by Pinker is interesting in its own right. But what does it have to do with the way we learn, or how we think about place and scale?