
Florence Nightingale saved people with her grasp of numbers - kschua
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/alan-finkel-ao/florence-nightingale-saved-far-more-people-with-her-grasp-of-num_a_23014858/
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taion
For those, like me, who find the writing style somewhat annoying, this is the
part of the article that relates directly to the title:

> Imagine the situation Florence Nightingale confronted in the Crimea.
> Everyone knew that, in a war, soldiers get shot. Everyone knew that people
> who are shot tend to die. What they didn't know was that the vast majority
> of deaths in the Crimean War weren't caused by wounds at all -- they were
> caused by diseases like cholera and typhus. Thus military leaders didn't
> implement the basic sanitary precautions in field hospitals and military
> barracks that would save lives by stopping the spread of disease.

> Florence Nightingale saw the problem, but she needed her own ammunition. So
> she counted the dead, collected the data, and displayed it in a polar area
> diagram.

> It was a credible, clear and compelling display of the causes of death. And
> suddenly the problem was no longer too abstract to ignore. It was fixable.

> That is how a woman -- a nurse -- took on the top brass of the British
> military and won.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Reading the wikipedia page with the section specific to the title is a better
experience also.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale#Statistic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale#Statistics_and_sanitary_reform)

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fineline
Interesting that despite this being an Australian speech reported on an
Australian site, there is no mention of Nightingale's role in the development
of nursing in Australia, at the request of the great Henry Parkes. Here's his
granddaughter (herself a nursing educator) on the subject:

[http://www.nurseuncut.com.au/from-nightingale-nurses-to-
mode...](http://www.nurseuncut.com.au/from-nightingale-nurses-to-modern-
profession-nursing-in-australia/)

If only we had statesmen of the calibre of Parkes today, instead of the
shameful and mediocre crop we've got now.

~~~
trothamel
Totally off topic, but I was wondering if that Parkes somehow had the Parkes
radiotelescope named after him. The timing seemed wrong, but it seemed worth
checking.

Turns out he visited the town once, so they renamed it after him. Chuck
Norris, eat your heart out.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes,_New_South_Wales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes,_New_South_Wales)

~~~
fineline
Yes that says quite a bit about how highly he was regarded, plus he did also
assist in promoting the survey of the town, opening it up for development.
Parkes was central in many aspects of development of the colony over his
lifetime, including bringing to an end convict transports from England,
providing universal education, commissioning landmarks such as Martin Place
and Centennial Park which frame modern Sydney, and above all getting the
various colonial states around the table to form the great nation of
Australia.

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aphextron
>LESSON TWO: Learning maths is hard.

I wish this were more widely accepted, rather than the fallacy of "math
people". Mastering even undergraduate level mathematics is the single hardest
intellectual pursuit any human can undertake. There's no way around it. It's
just an insanely hard thing to do. I've been taking remedial math courses in
prep for a CS degree after 10 years in the industry, and it is absolutely
maddening.

~~~
noufalibrahim
I think the point on how mathematics is incrementally built is the main take
away.

My issue with many of the maths courses especially in early primary classes is
that they lack rigour. It seems to be about solving practical problems
(calculating grocery lists totals etc.) rather than really understanding what
happens when you do arithmetic. There are some things that genuinely help when
memorised (e.g. the times tables) when you're doing arithmetic but that's
looked down upon.

I'm trying to remedy this with my own children but it's a bit of an uphill
battle. This article is definitely something I can use in my attempts.

