(Thursday 15th, 16:30-18:00)

The Great Debates of ICOTS 8

Coordinators

• Chris Wild (University of Auckland)
• Helen MacGillivray (Queensland University of Technology)

Abstract

Participants

Dani Ben Zvi, Adrian Bowman, Rob Gould, Irena Ograjensek
Enriqueta Reston, Eric Sowey, Susan Starkings, Linda Young

Propositions to be debated (moots)

• Formal statistical inference has no place in high school curriculums
• Researching is more fun than teaching

These debates will be modelled on the style of debating in use in English-speaking schools and universities, but with relaxed rules. It is a competitive team sport. For each proposition, one team (the “affirmative team”) will try to make a convincing case that the proposition is true, whereas the other team (the “negative team”) will try to argue for the opposite.

For a particular debate, three members of each team will speak.

• First speaker: outlines the Team’s definition of what the proposition means, outlines the Team’s plan of attack and starts presenting the team’s substantive arguments.
• Second speaker: spends some time rebutting the arguments of opposition speaker one but more of it presenting the rest of the Team’s case.
• Third speaker: spends about 3/4 of the time on rubbishing the opposition’s arguments and the rest reminding the audience of their own team’s all-so-convincing arguments but introduces no new arguments.

Each speaker will have 5 minutes strictly enforced. To get around language difficulties teams will be allowed to use audio visual aids, or anything else they think will increase their audience scores. Scoring will involve an Adjudicator and audience acclamation and be based on both quality of argument and humour. For each debate there will be 3 speakers from each team. Thus, for each debate, one member of each team will not speak (a different person for each debate). The non-speaking person can, however, still participate in other ways.