Episode 11.03: The maths of AI; overfitting and underfitting.

Teachers of all levels need to resolve a particular conundrum, which is how to prepare children well enough for whatever challenges they may face in the future including examinations, but not to make them think what they have been taught is everything that they could possibly need to know. And the other is not preparing them well enough for whatever challenges they may need to face The example, in the episode is of memorising the solutions to all the crossword puzzles that have ever been set without learning how to do crossword puzzles. That will not enable you to do the next crossword puzzle, which I presented with. The same is true of preparing for exams: there is merit in doing some past papers, so that you understand what is expected of you and the structure, but to do every past paper, as though that would somehow prepare you in the absence of a real understanding of what the contents of the paper was, is not going to help you Of course, the opposite is not to know enough to have insufficient skills and that is called underfitting, under-educating, under-learning, not having reached the required standard.