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STARTER: algorithms are a method and a tool to change your perspective. Discuss.
STARTER: algorithms are a method and a tool to change your perspective. Discuss.
Objective: explore the benefits of utilising technology in our search for knowledge.
Objective: explore the benefits of utilising technology in our search for knowledge.
Outcomes:
Outcomes:
Algorithmic thinking:
“..an algorithm is just a sequence of steps used to solve a problem, and algorithms are much broader - and older by far - than the computer.... algorithms are not confined to mathematics alone. When you cook bread from a recipe, you’re following an algorithm. When you knit a sweater from a pattern, you’re following an algorithm...Algorithms have been a part of human technology ever since the stone Age.”
According to the definition above, what algorithms do you use in your daily life?
2. The hiring problem:
Imagine you are hiring for a position and you want the best possible employee. After each interview you can either offer the job or turn down the potential employee; importantly you can’t go back and offer a position to someone you have turned down.
If there are only 2 applicants, then randomly choosing will give you the best candidate 50% of the time (no strategy can improve that).
With 3 candidates randomly guessing gives you the best candidate ⅓ of the time. But it turns out that there is a strategy that will allow you to get the best candidate 50% of the time.
What is that strategy?
Click here for the answer...
For 3 people:Always say no to the first one.If the second one is better than the first, hire them on the spot. If not, hire the third one.
Amazingly this only dismisses the best employee 1/3 of the time and never meets the best employee only 1/6 of the time leaving a success rate of 50% much better than a random guess!
The strategy boils down to waiting for a period of time and then offering the position to the next applicant who is better than everyone else you have interviewed so far.
So you could say that for 3 applicants you should take the best applicant after seeing 1 applicant.
Amazingly this only dismisses the best employee 1/3 of the time and never meets the best employee only 1/6 of the time leaving a success rate of 50% much better than a random guess!
The strategy boils down to waiting for a period of time and then offering the position to the next applicant who is better than everyone else you have interviewed so far.
So you could say that for 3 applicants you should take the best applicant after seeing 1 applicant.
Want more ? If you have 10 applicants, you should take the best applicant after seeing ______ applicants.
What about 1000?
Answer below
If you have 10 applicants, you should take the best applicant after seeing 3 applicants. This gives the best application 39.87% of the time.
If you have 1000 applicants, you should take the best applicant after seeing 369 applicants. This gives the best application 36.81% of the time.
3. Spot the methods and tools here....
What role have technological methods had tools had on our knowledge of the shape of the Earth?
4. “We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.” Victor Hugo
Working in pairs, choose one of the following articles to use for exploring the questions below:
What do these images show us that our eyes are unable to see without assistance?
How does it affect our knowledge of microscopic and telescopic worlds?
Does it matter that we cannot see this nuance without technology?
5. Watch this and take notes on the evolution of methods and tools in astronomy and the impact on our search for knowledge.
6. DISCUSS: To what extent are technologies, such as the microscope and telescope, merely extensions to the human senses, or do they introduce radically new ways of seeing the world?
PLENARY: is there a technical limit to the methods and tools we can utilise in our search for knowledge?
PLENARY: is there a technical limit to the methods and tools we can utilise in our search for knowledge?
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