Four short links: 9 June 2016
Basketball Robot, Reasoned Discourse, Github for Teachers, and Companion Species Fiction
- Robots, Computer Vision, and Basketball — At the modified tractor shed in north Alabama that serves as Noah’s laboratory, he has built a machine that shoots a basketball with any arc he chooses. The results are always the same. The likelihood that any shot will go through the rim increases as the angle of entry gets steeper until the arc reaches 45 degrees, at which point the probability starts to decline. (via Dave Pell)
- Reasoned Discourse as a Vital 21st Century Skill — Not recognizing that multiple causes most often contribute to an outcome is severely limiting to thinking in general, as well as to discourse. Yet we found the majority of a random sample of adults satisfied with single causes of a phenomenon (such as poverty or longevity). Or, say, charismatic mega-CEOs.
- Why Secondary Teachers Don’t Want a github for Lesson Plans (Dan Meyer) — Dan asked his teacher friends, based on a topic at Ed Foo, and the standout response was: Using someone else’s lesson plan is like wearing a friend’s underwear. It may do the job but ultimately doesn’t fit quite right. Ultimately it’s because teaching is a process of unlocking learning, it’s not a process of sharing The Best Materials That Will Naturally Work Perfectly For Everyone.
- Quotes from H is for Hawk with Hawk Replaced by Machine Intelligence (Matt Jones) — I’m standing there, my sorry human eyes overwhelmed by light and detail, while the Machine Intelligence watches everything with the greedy intensity of a child filling in a colouring book, scribbling joyously, blocking in colour, making the pages its own. Matt’s a big fan of treating Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun To Be Wish as companion species.
