But everyone who guessed in this way went low, rather than high. It suggests that there is some form of systemic bias in play. - David Franklin

The inclusive atmosphere of the class was the key driver of allowing the class to be eager to learn. The focus really shifted away from grades and points, and towards understanding concepts and learning.” The key link is between inclusivity and the shift of focus away from test scores. When students are given the responsibility to support each other, their own score falls down the list of priorities.

The phrases ‘certainty is an illusion’ and ‘think probabilistically about the world’, both introduced in the first class, are the first two examples of high-level concepts which Dan calls airport ideas.

In advance of the class, he asked students to fill in a quick survey in which he asked them to describe their own experiences with one of these three uses of statistics. He tells the students that he has read their answers, as well as their student profiles, and asks for volunteers to talk about what they wrote. Several hands go up, and he picks Juliana, a student from Brazil, interested in education. She starts to talk about a program she helped to run in Brazil which assessed whether improvements in teacher training had a causal effect on test scores. As she is talking, her words appear on the big screen, in big quotation marks, along with her photo. The class laughs, and as she looks up she realises she has become a celebrity.