Education
-
Background: In the pre-Internet era, news was physically printed out on sheets of so-called “news” paper, which were published chronologically. As a result of these limitations, it was not possible to inform a reader of (say) July 1, 1910’s article about the merits of radium water that there would be a crucial retraction published on…
-
The Issue: It can be difficult to get motivated to read a textbook or dry historical tome. It’s much easier to read an action-filled story that features murder and intrigue! Proposal: In order to motivate a person to read a boring textbook, we will create a new kind of “hybrid” book: instead of printing a…
-
Background: Animals have varying caloric requirements: usually, larger/warmer ones need to eat more. The Issue: When a small animal eats a small portion of food, it’s hard to intuitively understand how much food that is at a human scale. For example, if a sparrow eats a single sesame seed, is that equivalent to a human…
-
Background: In many video games, the process of doling out upgrades to the player is represented in the form of a “skill tree,” where different branches indicate different fields of expertise (e.g. a branch for sword-fighting and a separate one for horseshoe-making). Proposal: Maybe this same idea can be applied to education! See Figure 1…
-
The issue: It’s often hard to get motivated to read a famous work of literature, especially when there are so many other forms of entertainment competing for one’s attention. Proposal: Let’s create a situation so that a person can read a book as a “bonus” along with a primary activity that they were already doing. (Ideally,…
-
Background: In many movies and books, a financial amount is discussed at some point. For example, a character may remark that a heist “could be worth 100,000 florins” or “the estate had fallen on hard times, and now generated only 576 denarii annually.” The issue: Is the amount discussed above a lot of money? Or…
-
Background: The same amount of money can represent vastly different things to different people. For a minimum-wage earner (in 2019), $10,000 represents roughly 65% of a year’s total salary. But for the very top level of executives at one of the top 350 U.S. firms, that number represents less than a day’s salary. The issue:…
-
Background: Some gangs are known for wearing specific colors. The issue: It occasionally happens that a non-gang-affiliated passerby’s clothing happens to match local gang colors by chance, which can lead to various unfortunate encounters. Proposal: Although it is unlikely that any existing gang will change its colors, if creating a new gang, a new “gang…
-
Background: Elementary school letter grades theoretically indicate the achievement of a certain degree of competency in a subject (e.g. a fourth-grader receiving an “A” in math would have learned all of the math that a fourth-grader is expected to know). The issue: There are a couple of immediate problems with the way report cards present…
-
The issue: Using your phone to read the news has three major downsides: You have to hold your phone. You could easily drop it! It uses battery life, which might be in short supply depending on how often you can charge your phone. A barrage of linked “clickbait” articles (with interesting photos) attempt to lure…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 