10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Gamification Simultaneous Action Selection Mechanic
Dr. Mays uses the Simultaneous Action Selection mechanic to structure his lesson. He creates two decks of cards—one with names of different cellular components (e.g., ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum) and another with a wide assortment of cellular functions and processes. He seats students in groups of five or six and explains the rules. During each turn, one student is going to pick a card from the component deck and read it out loud. Then the other students select a card from their hand (...Folksonomies: education gamification
Folksonomies: education gamification
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notes
notes27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Thin Slices of Joy
“Right now, I’m a little thirsty, so I will drink a bit of water. And when I do that, I experience a thin slice of joy both in space and time,” he told CBC News. “It’s not like ‘Yay!”” he notes in Joy on Demand. “It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of nice.’”
Usually these events are unremarkable: a bite of food, the sensation of stepping from a hot room to an air-conditioned room, the moment of connection in receiving a text from an old friend. Although they last two or th...Folksonomies: happiness well-being
Folksonomies: happiness well-being
1 notes
notes09 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
Why Did Everyone Draw that Fancy "S" in Grade School
"The reason kids go through this is probably because it's a Moebius strip," he said, referring to the sort of looped one-surface shapes Escher was fond of drawing. "It can't be drawn continuously, but it does have a perpetual flow."
I think he was on to something. Most nine-year-olds can't draw, so when someone hands them a magical recipe to create something fairly cool, on demand—that'll go viral. Especially when the shape has the sophisticated, mathematical lineage of a Moebius strip. Y... 1 notes
notes09 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
How to Teach Vocabulary
Begin with a story or explanation of the term. Modeling how you use the word in your life
or in conversation may be helpful to students.
Have students put information into their own words. This process, which I call “recoding,”
is necessary to make sure students understand the word. This is a vital step in the memory
process. Skipping this step can be disastrous as students may have a misconception
that will be placed in long-term memory through incorrect rehearsals (Sprenger, 2005).
Ask ...Folksonomies: teaching vocabulary
Folksonomies: teaching vocabulary
1 notes
notes19 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Oliver Sacks on Focus in the Last Months of Life
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.
This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gi... 1 notes
notes19 DEC 2014 by ideonexus
How the Finance Industry Hurts the Economy
In perhaps the starkest illustration, economists from Harvard University and the University of Chicago wrote in a recent paper that every dollar a worker earns in a research field spills over to make the economy $5 better off. Every dollar a similar worker earns in finance comes with a drain, making the economy 60 cents worse off.
[...]
...the growth of complex financial products has served primarily to boost income for the firms themselves, Philippon said. A new paper from researchers in t... 1 notes
notes27 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Why Economists Will Continue to be Wrong
Carter had initially used arbitrary parameters in his perfect model to generate perfect data, but now, in order to assess his model in a realistic way, he threw those parameters out and used standard calibration techniques to match his perfect model to his perfect data. It was supposed to be a formality--he assumed, reasonably, that the process would simply produce the same parameters that had been used to produce the data in the first place. But it didn't. It turned out that there were many ...
1 They make models based on past data, and when they fail to predict the future, they adjust them to match the new past data. The problem is that so many models will match the past data, there could be no end to the number of models they throw out.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Predictability and the Base Rate
Whenever a statistician wants to predict the likelihood of some event based on the available evidence, there are two main sources of information that have to be taken into account: (1) the evidence itself, for which a reliability figure has to be calculated; and (2) the likelihood of the event calculated purely in terms of relative incidence. The second figure here is the base rate. Since it is just a number, obtained by the seemingly dull process of counting, it frequently gets overlooked wh...Folksonomies: predictability
Folksonomies: predictability
1 notes
notesKeith Devlin explains why the accuracy of tests and measurments must take into account the base rate for the phenomenon.
22 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Steel Man Argument
Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or argument's improved form. A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone's position or argument that is easy to defeat: a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.Folksonomies: debate
Folksonomies: debate
Contrasts with the straw man, work from an idealized articulation of your opponent's viewpoint and try to improve upon it.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
A Positive Spin on Automation
Our labor world and all salaried workers, including school teachers
and college professors, are now, at least subconsciously if not
consciously, afraid that automation will take away their jobs. They
are afraid they won't be able to do what is called "earning a living,"
which is short for earning the right to live. This term implies that
normally we are supposed to die prematurely and that it is
abnormal to be able to earn a living. It is paradoxical that only the
abnormal or exceptional are ... 1 notes
notesBuckminster believes in automation because it will create more freetime and allow more adaptive behaviors in human beings, but he fails to take into account capitalist society where livings must be earned.
