The Physics Education Group at Kansas State University has made a set of tools for teaching quantum mechanics. Some of them involve computer simulation of wave packets, etc. This helps for visualizing the (rather complex) ideas behind quantum mechanics. I interacted with these tools while taking an undergraduate physics course (intended for non-majors). They really worked well.
At our university we have several different instructors teaching a series of logic courses. Currently, each instructor uses their own favorite notes and textbooks. This means that what students learn in in one class is different from what is used in the very next course in the series. We also have several different instructors for the same course, each develops her own course materials. It's a mess.
We have started using a wiki to cooperatively develop materials for this course. We hope that it will eventually replace the text books. People are excited because no one is giving up control of *their* course, but at the same time, we don't duplicate efforts and people are forced to resolve their differences when it comes to presentation.
Its actually Condorcet's jury theorem. In order for it to hold, it needs to be the case that each new person has a better than 50% chance of getting the problem right. I highly doubt this is the case with very hard problems like P=NP, etc. If this condition doesn't hold as you add more people the probability of getting the right answer goes down, and this is folk's concern.
Remember solving the problem is not just getting the right answer. For instance, I might declare that I think P=NP, and I have a reasonable chance of being right. What constitutes a solution is also providing a proof. I feel very confident that anyone in this country who has a better than 50% chance of getting a proof of P=NP is already working on the problem, and probably already discussing this issue with others.
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The Physics Education Group at Kansas State University has made a set of tools for teaching quantum mechanics. Some of them involve computer simulation of wave packets, etc. This helps for visualizing the (rather complex) ideas behind quantum mechanics. I interacted with these tools while taking an undergraduate physics course (intended for non-majors). They really worked well.
At our university we have several different instructors teaching a series of logic courses. Currently, each instructor uses their own favorite notes and textbooks. This means that what students learn in in one class is different from what is used in the very next course in the series. We also have several different instructors for the same course, each develops her own course materials. It's a mess.
We have started using a wiki to cooperatively develop materials for this course. We hope that it will eventually replace the text books. People are excited because no one is giving up control of *their* course, but at the same time, we don't duplicate efforts and people are forced to resolve their differences when it comes to presentation.
-z
Its actually Condorcet's jury theorem. In order for it to hold, it needs to be the case that each new person has a better than 50% chance of getting the problem right. I highly doubt this is the case with very hard problems like P=NP, etc. If this condition doesn't hold as you add more people the probability of getting the right answer goes down, and this is folk's concern.
Remember solving the problem is not just getting the right answer. For instance, I might declare that I think P=NP, and I have a reasonable chance of being right. What constitutes a solution is also providing a proof. I feel very confident that anyone in this country who has a better than 50% chance of getting a proof of P=NP is already working on the problem, and probably already discussing this issue with others.
-z