Bill Nye the Science Guy

The Disney DVD "Bill Nye The Science Guy:Probability" features Bill and supporting actors in a very short ( 23 minute) video about probability. Bill Nye's demonstrations of probability have the same depth and accuracy as Mickey Mouse's demonstrations of rodent biology - which is to say that Bill doesn't explain anything about the actual properties of probability. There is no mention of the laws of probability, no discussion of independent events, no mention of set unions and intersections, no mathematical formulas. The DVD merely presents a variety of situations that have stochastic outcomes. In the simple cases, the actors state numerical values for the probabilities involved. What little is said about the concept of probability itself is insubstantial and misleading.The DVD offers entertainment. In that aspect, Bill gives the "The Standard Deviants" a run for their money (not a race that everyone will care to witness). Bill takes his usual pratfalls. Probability examples are staged as comic skits. It's all G-rated material that is sure to captivate small children and school boards.The DVD has various "extra" features that have as little educational content as the main program.Probability is a sophisticated concept. When introducing a complex idea to young children, people often give them an oversimplified, even utterly false substitute for the real thing. The hope is that this will tide them over and perhaps defer the labor of teaching to another instructor. The false substitution that that Bill uses is to equate "the probability of occurrence" with "the actual frequency of occurrence". Many adults suffer from that misconception and I suppose this DVD would be a good way for them to pass it on to their children. What harm would that do? I don't foresee any rough sailing for the little darlings until they encounter a college course on statistics. Not all will go that route. Those that do will have to deal with concepts like "the distribution of the sample mean" in a coin tossing experiment. They may feel incredulity that "the frequency of occurrence" can take on a different values than the "probability of occurrence" - and worse, the instructor will be talking about the "probabilities" of those different frequencies actually occurring. However, by the time this happens the kids will be spending most of their time away at school and they won't expect their parents to help with homework.Another misconception that the DVD encourages is the thought that when there are N possible outcomes of an event, each outcome must have probability 1/N. Colleges can't complain too much about this since their introductory probability courses accomplish the same thing. They have the concept of probability so tangled up with the mathematics of combinatorics that Probability 101 graduates think that any probability must be defined by "the number of favorable outcomes divided by the number of possible outcomes." At least that fallacy honors the historical origins of the subject.I rate this DVD as two stars out of five to indicate that it is a misleading and insubstantial description of probability. It does present a nice set of situations where probability is involved. The product advertising recommends this DVD for grades 4-8. I'd say if you are going to inflict it on someone, try grades 1-3.Synopsis Of The Main Program (23 minutes) And Some CommentsBill says "Everything that happens really has a chance of happening or not happening. Everything has what we call a 'probability'."We see three doors. Bill tells us that his lab is behind one of them, so each door "has probability 1 in 3 of taking us where we want to go." Bill opens door #1. From a mist, a mechanical arm with a boxing glove hits him in the face. He says he should have remembered his face mask, which he puts on. He says "Well now there's two doors left. There's a 1 in 2 probability." He opens door #2. From a mist, a mechanical arm with a boxing glove punches him in the stomach. Bill opens door #3 and it reveals a small patio or balcony. He talks as he backs into it. He falls backward over its low wall. We see him falling into a dumpster. Bill says "There are ways to figure the chances of something happening or not happening, it's what we call, in science, 'probability'."[The modern emphasis on achievement testing has some merit, but one unfortunate consequence is that educational materials spend all their time stating facts and neglect to pose provocative questions whose answers are not yet known by adults. In the above example, according to Bill, the probability of door #2 leading to the lab changes from 1/3 to 1/2 after door #1 is opened. So, is this probability a physical property of the door #2? After all, we don't expect the mass or volume of door #2 to change when door #1 is opened. Or is this probability a property of Bill's mind? - making it something that depends on his state of knowledge. If the probability changes from 1/3 to 1/2, does it change all of a sudden or does it gradually increase from 1/3 to 1/2 as door #1 opens? Questions like this may continue to inspire a kid's' thinking many years after they are posed. The DVD moves quickly to the next segment without asking anything.]We see a large seesaw contraption used for flipping a large coin. Bill jumps on one end of it and flips the coin. Bill says "If you think about it, it gonna land heads or tails every time. Now heads or tails means a 1 in 2 probability for either one." Bill says " We can't predict exactly how it's going to land on every toss, but we can predict exactly for a whole bunch of tosses. Eventually there will exactly as many heads as tails". [ What is Bill trying to say? No matter how many tosses you make, whenever you have made an odd number of tosses there won't be exactly as many heads as tails. Is Bill saying that we can flip the coin until we get the same number of heads and tails and then stop flipping it? We could just as well agree to flip the coin until we had 5 more heads than tails and then stop. Apparently the writers of this DVD intended to give an oversimplified version of the The Law Of Large Numbers and didn't grasp that an application of that law would tell about the ratio of heads to the total number of flips, not about the exact equality of the number of heads and tails. ]We see two kids. A girl flips a coin. A boy tries to guess the outcome. The skit emphasizes that the coin flips might result in a long run of tails. The girl says "If you flip the coin enough times, the probability always averages out to be one chance in two." [The probability of a head is 1/2 even if you never flip the coin. It doesn't depend on averaging out anything. The value of this probability is established by the assumption that we have a fair coin, not by how many heads we have gotten when we flip it. This skit is an example of how the DVD confuses the idea of "probability" with idea of "actual frequency".]We see a machine to dispense gum balls. Bill sorts the six different colors of gum balls in a tray. This this example, there are more blue balls than balls of the other colors. Bill asserts that the probability of getting a blue ball is higher than the probability of getting a ball of another color. The puts the balls in the machine. He turns the handle on the machine and draws a blue ball. He wants to get a green one next and fails. He gets a few more balls of various colors. [This skit hints at a scenario for explaining "random sampling without replacement", but that topic is not mentioned on the DVD.]A skit parodies the part of the "Wizard of Oz" where Dorthy meets the wizard and exposes him behind his curtain. The "Wizard of Odds" asserts the probability of rain and various other things. [ The educational values are really wearing thin at this point.]Bill stands in front of a large apparatus where black balls are dropped though a network of rods and land in a pattern that approximates a bell shaped distribution. He says "By figuring out what's average, we can predict the future." He also says "The probability that makes this shape is part of the nature of the world." ... "We see a lot of bell shapes curves in nature. They're normal". [ This hints at the connection between the normal probability distribution and a bell shaped curve, but the DVD does not explain probability distributions. Bill's mention of "normal" is merely an inside joke.]A girl uses refrigerator magnets to explain how gender is determined by X and Y chromosomes and asserts that the probability of being a girl is 1/2, likewise the probability of being a boy is 1/2.Bill mentions that insurance companies use probabilities to determine how much to charge for insurance while, in the background, we see thieves stripping his Volkswagen bug.Bill says that in most state lotteries "your chances of winning are one in five million". These odds are illustrated by a large bin containing five million styrofoam peanuts. There is a single red peanut somewhere in the bin, the rest are white. Bill dives in the bin looking for the red peanut.Sports commentators talk about the progress of a football game where points are awarded according to coin flips.The "birthday problem" is introduced. For 23 people, the probability that two have the same birthday is "about 1 in 2". Bill begins computing the the probability on a blackboard but there are are various interruptions. A sign comes up that says "technical difficulties". We don't see the the rest of his work. The message conveyed to the audience is that the calculations are too hard to understand.We see a wildlife biologist at work. She mentions that information about a whole population can be obtained "just by sampling". She says that the probability of finding a banded bird is less than 5% while the probability of finding a bird with a radio transmitter attached to it is about 80%. [ Although this segment uses the word "sampling", the idea of sampling is never explained on the DVD. ]Using stacks of large dice, Bill explains that when throwing a pair of dice, a 7 is the most likely result since there are more combinations of faces that form it.Bill is in the woods. Inside a rectangle that has been taped off on the ground, he has found a single four leaf clover, which he shows us. He says that that the area of the rectangle is 10 square meters and that there are about 5000 clovers in the patch. He says that the probability of finding a four leaf clover in another section of the park is 1 in 5000. [That would be correct if the method of searching for four leaf clovers is to pick only a single clover at random. However, this is not how most people search for four leaf clovers.]We see a music video that uses excerpts from previous scenes.We see a few seconds of Bill Nye looking for identical snowflakes in a snowdrift using a magnifying glass. He announces the end of the program.Other DVD FeaturesThe other DVD features are no more educational than the main program and some are rather depressing.For example, there is a 10 question quiz. Question #2 says: "There us a greater probability of a coin landing on heads than tails." (True or False) I suppose good children ought to believe that all coins are fair. Thirty years ago there were materials for secondary math (written by real mathematicians) that used the example of a bent coin to emphasize that not all coins are fair. This is a poor question to put on a probability test. A kid who thinks that some coins are not fair can also arrive at the answer "False" if he understands logical quantifiers, but logical quantification is not what should be tested in this quiz.A screen on the DVD states "The DVD provides students with valid science content through the National Science Education Standards-aligned video clips and a host of other resources" On the main menu, you can pick the items "Science Standards" and "Math Standards". Then you will see a list of "standards", such as "Decisions are made based on perceptions of benefits and risks", and links to relevant clips in the main program, such as Bill's skits about the lottery and car insurance. It's sad to think that there are educational bureaucracies that spend their time producing lists of such vacuous "standards" and DVD makers that spend their time vacuously meeting them.

This review is a reflection of all the Bill Nye videos in general, not necessarily any video in the series in particular. I can assure the reader, I own more than 15 of the Bill Nye science videos, so I am posting general comments and a particular criticism that may or may not be applicable the video in which this review is published.I am a home-schooling parent who practices applied science (I design integrated circuits) and want my children to be jazzed about science. And in my opinion, Bill Nye has produced some of the best videos that keep my 6-9 yo children (both boys and girls) totally engrossed. My kids want to watch the videos 2 or 3 or 4 times in one sitting. The age-appropriateness of the videos are for grade school level thru junior high and involve experiments that are often easily repeated at home.Having been raised in Seattle, its also fun for me to see some of the old "Almost Live" co-stars Bill uses in the video....as well as the sites from around Seattle where the video is taken.My only criticism of the series is that the series is accompanied (peppered) with a bit of scientism sub or pseudo-scientific claims by the scientific "establishment" that are not substantiated by experiment or observation....and young minds will not able to differentiate.For another great video series see the best of Beakman's world....great for grade-school aged children.

I am a science teacher for grades 5 - 8. Bill Nye Wind is an excellent introduction to weather and wind energy. Keep in mind, this movie targets 5th and 6th grade. It explains how wind is caused by heat from the sun and the rotation of the earth in a way that kids can really understand. And they enjoy it. I will be using it every year.

Bill Nye series are great for introducing kids to science in a fun way and sparking their interest in study of nature. Bill talks about how nature works with many jokes, stunts, and other entertaining ways.They are not for teaching formal science literacy of issues such as how to set up and experiment, how to gather data, derive conclusions from results, basically not about how you think about stuff as a scientist.Bill is now the head of the Planetary Society trying to promote space exploration. I don't know if he still makes these DVDs.

Purchased these for my nephew who loves "documentaries" at the age of 6. So we decided to introduce him to Bill Nye. He was very excited to open them up. As my sister is a home school mom, these fit in with her science "class" and are a good school tool as well. I believe the DVD's are a little pricey if you want to own them all. But they are very well done.

The DVD arrived in perfect condition, well packed and spotless. The quality of the product was stellar exceeding the expectations for my specific use. The content is sophisticated and accurate, but fun in the traditional Bill Nye style. I have already used the DVD and the kids in my Gifted and Talented progam loved it. The film inspired me with a few new ideas for follow-up projects for the class.

I had students ask to watch this one twice. And it wasn't just to get out of doing other work because they had to answer the study questions that came with the DVD. This was such a fun way to preview and review the materials. And for me, the teacher, it's so much fun watching the black-and-white classic clips from early TV years.

These are scientific in the sense that they introduce ideas and concepts. However, they are at a pretty basic level and still much more entertainment than education (for example, they end with mini-music videos-- cute but don't teach anything). Compared to lots of videos they are obviously superior in at at least trying to teach something but in no way should anyone pay the ridiculously high prices that are currently listed-- for the 10 pack, each of videos would be about $25-- it is simply not worth it. I got this pack for $100 and that was about right-- averaging $5 per episode (2 are on each DVD).

I teach high school and use this DVD as a review for my lesson plans on the six nutrients, etc. My students always enjoy Bill Nye. Great DVD!