Risks and risk analysis

Opinion: Now you are ready to start Kindergarten-level math, “coach”

The primary reason that you are ready to be a coach is that you have come this far. You accept the idea that you can be a force in the math education of your children and that you plan to walk the trail with them. You accept the idea that, while you are not their assigned classroom teacher, you can offer continuity, motivation, and guidance for them to stay on the trail. You appreciate what the payoffs may be for becoming a life-long learner of math.

We continue these discussions in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put traditional classroom schooling in doubt. On the one hand, the risk of transmitting the virus is real. While the numbers of infections and deaths are subject to both change and measurement error, there is little doubt that there is risk when children are indoors, in relatively close quarters, over extended periods of time. Moreover, while it has been argued that the risk to children is relatively low, the risk to adults from children who might be carriers of the disease must also be considered. Those adults include teachers, parent helpers, adult school staff members, and the families of the children, especially those who are in vulnerable age groups. To reduce the risk of transmission will, at a minimum, require masks, physical distancing, improved ventilation, and reduced time indoors in groups, improvements which require funding.

The risks of infection are generally understood by decision makers, as is the deprivation which children suffer from not going to class as they were before the pandemic struck. In any event, some or all of K-12 education is likely to continue to be supplied at a distance, at least in the near term. The disadvantages of distance learning, resulting from differences in available resources, the loss of face-to-face communication between teacher and students, the loss of classroom control, the distractions at home of students trying to learn from a computer, and the lack of remote teaching experience by most classroom teachers, degrades the learning experience.

So what? The primary problem is that your child will get older each day, so learning gaps suffered now will be difficult to close later. The solution? I believe that it falls to you, Coach, to prevent those gaps from opening in the first place.

 CCM Lesson of the Day: Risk analysis

Let’s talk about the math of risks. With all the talk of the risk surrounding the pandemic, I believe that it is useful to look at the math.

Risk analysis is a topic of interest that companies, large and small, address every day. Suppose that you own a restaurant. You keep a certain amount of milk in your refrigerator for various foods and drinks. You don’t use much, so there are times when you have more left-over milk than you expected. Question: what is the risk of keeping milk past the expiration date? I suggest that you break the math into two parts: first, what is the probability that the milk will go bad and make one or more customers sick? And second, how serious would it be if one or more customers got sick?

Let’s say that, because you and your staff are sensitive to the look and odor of milk, the risk of the event (using or serving bad milk) is low. Does that mean that you should not worry about keeping the milk past the expiration date? That depends on how serious it would be if the event (customers getting sick) occurred. If it were discovered that you knowingly served expired milk thereby causing illness, that could threaten your profits, if not your entire restaurant. Knowing that, is it worth taking the risk of using expired milk?

How would you apply risk analysis to opening schools during a pandemic?