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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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
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.
08 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
What's Good for a Business Can be Bad for Society
Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved. For instance, a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to insure through a doorway (to become insured) in order to make a supernat... 1 notes
notesBusinesses that refuse to insure high-risk individuals leave the burden of those individuals on the whole community.
06 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Check Your Privilege
Learn to Listen Rather Than Speak
This one is a lot harder than it sounds, and I say this as someone who loves speaking and voicing her opinion on things. One of the greatest things we, as privileged people, can bring to a discussion being held by non-privileged groups is our closed mouths and open ears/minds. When you enter a minority space, you need to realize that this is their soapbox, not yours. Your privilege gives you many other soapboxes that you can take advantage of, so when p... 1 notes
notesFrom the article that inspired the use of this term in debate.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Origin of Chaos Theory
Lorenz and his team were working to develop a weather forecasting program on an early computer known as a Royal McBee LGP-30.21 They thought they were getting somewhere until the computer started spitting out erratic results. They began with what they thought was exactly the same data and ran what they thought was exactly the same code—but the program would forecast clear skies over Kansas in one run, and a thunderstorm in the next.
After spending weeks double-checking their hardware and t...Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Weather modeling produced two widely different results when a few thousandths of a decimal point went missing.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Theories Must be Falsifiable
In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality. Folksonomies: theory falsifiability
Folksonomies: theory falsifiability
1 notes
notesIf they are not, they do not speak about reality.
