Random Explorations

This morning we spent time flipping coins and looking for "streaks", and predicting/discussing how long we expect them to be.  Then when transitioned to coding we simulated flipping LOTS of coins...millions and millions of them.

We got to see how the actual physical process (flipping real coins), a computer program that generates pseudo-random numbers, and some math (exponents) are all representations of the same thing.

Peabody Essex Museum - Salem, MA

A Public Experiment

Tuesday morning we had some introductions and activities to get to know each other, then we launched into our first "Our of Code" using the python programming language.  Elaine and I may be scrambling to create more coding content before the end of this course because the students raced through the first lesson, writing loops and learning about variables and increments.  A favorite activity was seeing how big numbers need to get before it starts affecting the computer (numbers with more digits than can fit on the screen seemed to be doing the trick).

In the afternoon, after some Summer Session orientation, we returned to class and broke out the KEVA planks.  The goal of these activities was to both practice writing clear & unambiguous instructions, and to gain an appreciation for how hard it can be to so.  As the students discovered, there's a good reason LEGO sets have pictorial directions instead of written directions.

We went through a couple iterations of designing structures and then trying to write instructions that other people could follow to re-create the same structure.  Then it was dinner time and off to Paresky Commons to ask other Summer Session students to try to follow our instructions.  Each team of two students tested out the instructions from a different team, taking notes and photos.  The exit polls seemed to show that this was a lot tougher than was expected.  "Wow...people are bad at following instructions!" was one conclusion.

In class on Wednesday we'll share findings from this experiment.

Day 1: Arrival

Everybody is here! Elaine and I spent most of the day at Adams Hall, greeting students. We had arrivals all through the day, with very few hiccups (some problems with keys to dorm rooms). And it was hot, hot hot...fortunately the summer school office has a huge supply of fans. I wonder how many of them have been left by students from previous years? Elaine and I also finally got keys to our own classroom...and discovered that all the desks are the one-piece units that combine chair and desk, which would make it tough to do some of the projects we'll be doing that require large work surfaces. Plus the desks have sloped tops, which won't work with Keva planks. And there's no wall space to work with. Uh-oh. Fortunately, Mike Barker at the Library came through for us and for the next two weeks we'll be in the Makerspace, which is really the best classroom at Phillips Academy. Tomorrow morning at 9:00 "Seeing in Patterns, Thinking in Code" officially takes off.

Math & Art

© Phillips Academy

Here's a great example of PA students using the Addison Gallery to explore patterns and math through art: reconstructing Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawing #716.  We're going to be doing activities like this...although probably not this exact one...this summer during Seeing in Patterns, Thinking in Code.

Swing-O-Matic

FiveThirtyEight has a fantastic interactive data visualization they are calling the Swing-O-Matic. It lets you fiddle with voter turnout and party preferences of various demographic groups to see what the impact would be on the upcoming presidential election.  It calculates both popular vote and electoral college.

See if you can tweak is so that the electoral winner and the popular winner are not the same!

The Importance of Understanding Algorithms

Is Facebook politically biased?

This question is in the news as a result of Gizmodo's accusation that Facebook intentionally distorts the "trending" list away from conservative viewpoints.

The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo has a must-read column, Facebook's Bias is Built-in, and Bears Watching, about the power of algorithms, not just to do complicated mathematics, but to sway human opinion and even elections:

“Algorithms equal editors,” said Robyn Caplan, a research analyst at Data & Society, a research group that studies digital communications systems. “With Facebook, humans are never not involved. Humans are in every step of the process — in terms of what we’re clicking on, who’s shifting the algorithms behind the scenes, what kind of user testing is being done, and the initial training data provided by humans.”

Understanding what algorithms are, and how computers sift and sort and shape data, is as important to citizenship in the digital era as is literacy.