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On the contrary, I think that this would be incredibly valuable even if the only thing it did was teach that numbers could be encoded using a series of left or

by saulrh 9y ago

On the contrary, I think that this would be incredibly valuable even if the only thing it did was teach that numbers could be encoded using a series of left or right flips on bits of plastic. I've done little "computers 101" tutorials for a few of my friends and coworkers that have "never been good at math", and every single time the star of the show was that epiphany about binary and what it meant about the nature of numbers and how we represent them. It may not be spectacular to us, but to someone that's never been able to handle math before, it's a whole new way of looking at the universe. Giving people that little tiny rock to stand on before throwing them into school would be a huge deal.

24gttghh 9y ago
>...epiphany about binary and what it meant about the nature of numbers and how we represent them. Would you please expand on this thought?
- saulrh 9y ago
  Ceci n'est pas une pipe. I've found that a lot of people that "aren't good at math" don't have a good grasp on what a number is, beyond a couple letters on a sheet of paper. They're stuck manipulating numbers by rote, with no understanding of what they're doing past the shapes on the paper changing into different shapes. Showing them how binary works, pulling back the curtain and revealing the difference between the platonic ideal of an integer and our representation of it, is pretty mind-blowing. Then you move from that to instantiating binary representations in the real world, with light switches or checkboxes, and you start getting the "this is how it works in real life" light bulbs that embed the new knowledge in their existing web of knowledge where it'll become permanent. (edit: let me plug my favorite how-to-program book here, while I'm thinking about it. It and GEB were the kernel of understanding around which I built the rest of my knowledge of math and CS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_Computer_Hardware_and_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_C...)
  - xg15 9y ago
    I absolutely agree with this. my issue was more that I was missing exactly that kind of connection to existing knowledge in the game - it's not aimed at teaching math but teaching the basic concepts of programming after all and for such an audience, I wonder if the goal "bring a sequence of colored marbles in a particular order" has any significance or connection to things they already know. Once that conncetion is there, you absolutely want to teach more abstract concepts. As an alternative example, I remember a nold intro to programming that involved a "turtle" - a virtual robot that you could direct on screen and that would draw a line. You could give it basic commands to move around and see it react. then, you could introduce more complex concepts (loops etc) that would enable you to draw more complex pictures - and so on...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

by saulrh 9y ago

24gttghh 9y ago

>...epiphany about binary and what it meant about the nature of numbers and how we represent them. Would you please expand on this thought?

saulrh 9y ago
Ceci n'est pas une pipe. I've found that a lot of people that "aren't good at math" don't have a good grasp on what a number is, beyond a couple letters on a sheet of paper. They're stuck manipulating numbers by rote, with no understanding of what they're doing past the shapes on the paper changing into different shapes. Showing them how binary works, pulling back the curtain and revealing the difference between the platonic ideal of an integer and our representation of it, is pretty mind-blowing. Then you move from that to instantiating binary representations in the real world, with light switches or checkboxes, and you start getting the "this is how it works in real life" light bulbs that embed the new knowledge in their existing web of knowledge where it'll become permanent. (edit: let me plug my favorite how-to-program book here, while I'm thinking about it. It and GEB were the kernel of understanding around which I built the rest of my knowledge of math and CS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_Computer_Hardware_and_Software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_C...)
- xg15 9y ago
  I absolutely agree with this. my issue was more that I was missing exactly that kind of connection to existing knowledge in the game - it's not aimed at teaching math but teaching the basic concepts of programming after all and for such an audience, I wonder if the goal "bring a sequence of colored marbles in a particular order" has any significance or connection to things they already know. Once that conncetion is there, you absolutely want to teach more abstract concepts. As an alternative example, I remember a nold intro to programming that involved a "turtle" - a virtual robot that you could direct on screen and that would draw a line. You could give it basic commands to move around and see it react. then, you could introduce more complex concepts (loops etc) that would enable you to draw more complex pictures - and so on...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]