It's an interesting test looking for something you know, but you do have to be careful extrapolating the quality of the data from some edge cases.
For those who don't know London well, Barkingside is an eastern suburb about 15 miles from the centre, where a lot of the original "East Enders" moved after the war.
If you did a similar test for New York you'd be doing something out past Newark NJ. It's not exactly where you'd start your mapping effort.
It's not just that it doesn't need to have a neatly tied up ending - it's that it doesn't have to spoon feed it to you. The Sopranos are trying to break you out of the bad Hollywood habits like making sure that everybody in their demographic can understand it instantly.
Go and watch some European cinema for example. You actually can't resolve who did what in Hidden (Caché) - and it doesn't matter - it isn't what it was about.
My tuppence worth. Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler (look them up).
Invented programming as-we-know-it - things like assembly and the sub-routine.
I wonder what would have happened if we'd had todays approach to intellectual property back then and those guys had patented something like the sub-routine (OK I know they couldn't have done that in the UK then - but go with me) ? That's a damn site less obvious than some of the stuff they give patents to now.
Another advantage of the Mars Bar Index is that it's good for historical comparisons - as we have data going back over ~70 years.
I suspect that these iPod models may not be in production in 2077 - modern antiques anybody?
Insolubility of the quintic, Godels Incompleteness Theorem..... Sure it's possible to prove something can't be done. Maybe Scott Adams isn't the best source to base your view of logic.
The opening of the original gives the clue to the biggest issue here. You have to pick something that the teachers can pick up and carry on in the rest of the lesson planning. That's why I gave up on Logo when I was a school governor - we found a turtle in the back of cupboard - but nobody knew how to use it. That's why Lego mindstorms is good for the this age range.
At this level all we really need to teach is that computers do exactly what you tell them - and that intelligent looking behaviour can be got from simple programs. Youd don't need a cool language for that.
To make it really easy for the schools we used our industry/school links and had a group of industry folks go in to the schools and do a Lego robot racing event having had our training and education people work up lessons plans the school could use staight out-of-the-box. We've done events in the US and UK so it can be tailored to a different curriculum.
Another good thing that it can be taken further into the First Lego League.
Absolutely - Mindstorms is fantastic for this. Last year we ran an event at a school for an introduction to programming for 13 year olds. Ths school has lots of computers - but they're mostly used for word processing, web design, etc, etc. No programming. The Mindstorms kit is brilliant for this age group for getting across the fundamental idea that it does exactly what you tell it. We pre-built a Roverbot type line-follower (to avoid wasting too much time on hnting for the right bricks) and built up from just making it move and turn into a line following race between teams by the end of the day. We knew we had them hooked when they were asking to stay in at break time to tweak it to make it go faster.
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It's an interesting test looking for something you know, but you do have to be careful extrapolating the quality of the data from some edge cases. For those who don't know London well, Barkingside is an eastern suburb about 15 miles from the centre, where a lot of the original "East Enders" moved after the war. If you did a similar test for New York you'd be doing something out past Newark NJ. It's not exactly where you'd start your mapping effort.
It's not just that it doesn't need to have a neatly tied up ending - it's that it doesn't have to spoon feed it to you. The Sopranos are trying to break you out of the bad Hollywood habits like making sure that everybody in their demographic can understand it instantly. Go and watch some European cinema for example. You actually can't resolve who did what in Hidden (Caché) - and it doesn't matter - it isn't what it was about.
My tuppence worth. Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler (look them up). Invented programming as-we-know-it - things like assembly and the sub-routine. I wonder what would have happened if we'd had todays approach to intellectual property back then and those guys had patented something like the sub-routine (OK I know they couldn't have done that in the UK then - but go with me) ? That's a damn site less obvious than some of the stuff they give patents to now.
Another advantage of the Mars Bar Index is that it's good for historical comparisons - as we have data going back over ~70 years. I suspect that these iPod models may not be in production in 2077 - modern antiques anybody?
Come on - that's just mean. I might've modded funny but somebody might actually try it.
Insolubility of the quintic, Godels Incompleteness Theorem ..... Sure it's possible to prove something can't be done. Maybe Scott Adams isn't the best source to base your view of logic.
The opening of the original gives the clue to the biggest issue here. You have to pick something that the teachers can pick up and carry on in the rest of the lesson planning. That's why I gave up on Logo when I was a school governor - we found a turtle in the back of cupboard - but nobody knew how to use it. That's why Lego mindstorms is good for the this age range. At this level all we really need to teach is that computers do exactly what you tell them - and that intelligent looking behaviour can be got from simple programs. Youd don't need a cool language for that. To make it really easy for the schools we used our industry/school links and had a group of industry folks go in to the schools and do a Lego robot racing event having had our training and education people work up lessons plans the school could use staight out-of-the-box. We've done events in the US and UK so it can be tailored to a different curriculum. Another good thing that it can be taken further into the First Lego League.
Absolutely - Mindstorms is fantastic for this. Last year we ran an event at a school for an introduction to programming for 13 year olds. Ths school has lots of computers - but they're mostly used for word processing, web design, etc, etc. No programming. The Mindstorms kit is brilliant for this age group for getting across the fundamental idea that it does exactly what you tell it. We pre-built a Roverbot type line-follower (to avoid wasting too much time on hnting for the right bricks) and built up from just making it move and turn into a line following race between teams by the end of the day. We knew we had them hooked when they were asking to stay in at break time to tweak it to make it go faster.