by Mark Dawes (February 2021)
I don’t often eat avocados but bought some last week when they were on special offer in the supermarket. I ate one this morning and then one of our cats, always excited about anything new in the house, jumped up and started licking the inside of the avocado skin. Three minutes later he started retching.
My first thought: “Cats don’t like avocados”. But maybe they love the taste, and it’s just too rich for them (in the same way that young children like chocolate but it can make them ill!).
Would it be better as: “Avocados make cats ill”? But perhaps that’s not true of all cats and only our cat is susceptible.
My third try: “My cat and avocados are not a good combination”. But maybe it’s only because it was the first time he had tried it and if he were to get used to it then things would be fine (not that I’m planning on this!).
Fourth go: “An avocado made my cat ill this morning”. That sounds better. But perhaps the timing was a fluke and he had previously eaten something else that didn’t agree with him.
I finally landed on: “My cat ate avocado and was ill a few minutes later. I don’t know if there is a connection.”
While this clearly links with the idea that “correlation is not causation” (demonstrated brilliantly here in one of my favourite xkcd cartoons), this made me think about online teaching and how we tell whether students are engaged in the lesson.
Continue reading →
