Progress in Algorithms Beats Moore’s Law???

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This was mentioned on slashdot…

They are claiming that progress on algorithms beats progress in hardware because a few algorithms have gotten a lot faster.

Problem is, people are going to believe this is true of all algorithms, and then they are going to generalize to all of programming – and there’s NO evidence to suggest that programs are any better. In fact thanks to the bloatware that is so popular these days we need more and more horsepower just to do the same crap.

Progress in Algorithms Beats Moore’s Law « Algorithmic Game-Theory/Economics.

This is simply goofy – just because they can point to a few algorithms as having been vastly improved does not mean all algorithms have progressed. What’s sad is that so many have picked this up and run with it as though it is meaningful.

Truth is programs have NOT gotten better so whether or not they can waste time more quickly is moot. Also, if they don’t run correctly it really doesn’t matter how fast they do it.

Faster is not always better.

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Violent games not to blame for youth aggression

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Finally! A study that looks for the keys where they were lost rather than under the streetlight.

Violent games not to blame for youth aggression.

Ferguson found that depressive symptoms were a strong predictor for youth aggression and rule breaking, and their influence was particularly severe for those who had preexisting antisocial personality traits. However, neither exposure to violence from video games or television at the start of the study predicted aggressive behavior in young people or rule-breaking at 12 months.

Ferguson concludes: “Depressive symptoms stand out as particularly strong predictors of youth violence and aggression, and therefore current levels of depression may be a key variable of interest in the prevention of serious aggression in youth. The current study finds no evidence to support a long-term relationship between video game violence use and subsequent aggression. Even though the debate over violent video games and youth violence will continue, it must do so with restraint.”

This comes on the heels of another study I came across the other day that was more like the typical “videogames cause violence” studies:

Violent Video Games…oh wait, no…Demand Characteristics Have Long-Term Influences

The study being discussed is here.

Very briefly, as is typical, the study authors randomly assigned college students to play either a violent (e.g. Mortal Kombat…which got me wondering if anyone even still plays that anymore) or non-violent (e.g. Grand Turismo 5, Guitar Hero) game.  Some of the participants (again randomly assigned) were then told to think about the game they had played for the next 24 hours.  They then returned to the lab the next day to be tested on their “aggression” using the commonly used “noise burst” TCRTT that has come under increasingly fire for poor validity recently (Kutner & Olson, 2008; Ritter & Eslea, 2005; Tedeschi & Quigley, 1996).  The authors claim results indicated that college students (the males at least, not the women) instructed by the experimenters to think about the video games over the intervening 24 hours were more “aggressive” whereas college students not so instructed were not.

Apparently, crap like this is publishable. Hmmmmm

People think more about videogames for 24 hours when told to think about videogames for 24 hours. Great.


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Communicating (a comment on Pidgin Learning by Clark Quinn)

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Here’s a short post from Clark Quinn about making communication work even when we don’t really share the same language:

Pidgin Learning

Very nicely put. I’ve been mired the writing of two chapters of my book that talk about definitions, and I think Clark has hit it bang on. In academia, much has to do with territory and attribution. Giving credit is important, but that too often becomes about territory – credit is given to those in one’s own field, but not to ‘outsiders’.

So I guess the question is, how do we motivate people to commit to the process?

In Quaker practice, for example, there is no voting on anything – all decisions proceed by consensus, which in this case means ‘permission to proceed’ as agreement is not required. The process assumes everyone is committed to the process, and here that’s usually true. It can be a slow process though as it requires that all participants have a chance to speak and to be heard.

The actually hearing what someone is saying is something many academics have a great deal of trouble doing.

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What’s the Difference between Training and Learning?

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This question came up on one of the forums I follow.

Discussions like this come up so frequently, that the only conclusion I can come to is that there is no general agreement on what many words mean. Unfortunately, we use these words constantly to communicate, and we expect the meanings to be shared by those to whom we speak.

Here’s my view (what’s yours?):

I think people tend to conflate learning and education, which are not the same things. Education is a subset of learning, and I would put training as a subset of education (i.e. training is a form of education).

Learning is something we do all the time – we can learn things that are useful or useless, good for us and dangerous. Learning is what we, as humans, /do/. Education, on the other hand is something done to us, sometimes we are willing participants but that is not requisite. Education is something deemed of value to the society in which it takes place (value-laden), whereas learning is value-neutral. Education is often externally motivated, deliberate, and coerced, where-as learning is mostly internally motivated, often coincidental, and completely natural.

Learning vs Education

Learning vs Education

There is a danger of definitions becoming confining, but my experience has been that that is already the case  and understanding what people mean when they say certain words is crucial to applied and interdisciplinary work. I have had people try to tell me that learning and education are the same things (i.e. all learning is education), but if we broaden a definition too far it becomes meaningless (and there’s no point in having two words that mean exactly the same thing). On the other hand many people are already constrained by how they define various terms, and understanding another’s definition can help broaden their horizons. I see this all the time when it comes to ‘games’ vs. ‘sims’ and how the terms are defined in education.

That having been said, as a sub-category of the broader field of education, training tends to be directed towards a specific occupation, job or task and is often skills-based. An education in philosophy is not training.

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EA says single-player games are finished?

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Frank Gibeau from EA says:

I volunteer you to speak to EA’s studio heads; they’ll tell you the same thing. They’re very comfortable moving the discussion towards how we make connected gameplay – be it co-operative or multiplayer or online services – as opposed to fire-and-forget, packaged goods only, single-player, 25-hours-and you’re out. I think that model is finished.

Really? The single-player model is done???? REALLY?

EA’s leap of faith | Game development | Features by Develop.

While I’m willing to concede that social play is huge, and likely to become a staple form of interaction, entertainment, learning, and, well just plain communication, it is a serious mistake to dismiss single-player games and the distinct experience that comes with that.

Personally, I prefer playing single-player games and also the single-player mode of multi-player games, most of the time. I don’t believe for a minute that I’m the only one.

The single player experience is different, sure, but it’s not a passing fad. Solitary play has been with us as long as social play (since long before we were literate). Animals do it. They do both: solitary play AND social play. Both are natural, so don’t give me this “it’s finished” crap.  I suspect what they really mean is, there’s way more money in multi-player, so that’s where we’re putting our resources.

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CS Education and Outreach, U of Calgary Style…

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It’s CS Education Week in Canada and the US. I find it amusing that the very day after complaining about how little most CS departments actually care about CS Ed, I stumble across this:

Computer Science Education Week – December 6-10, 2010 | Dept. of Computer Science – University of Calgary.

According to this site, which one would expect to be up to date (these are computer scientists after all, or so they say), the CS department at the UofC is doing some outreach . They say:

The mission of our Speaker’s Bureau is to engage our department in the high school computer science curricula development and to share our knowledge and exciting experience in computer science with high school students.

Sounds promising….

How may faculty are going out to the local high schools to give talks this week? 2 (yes folks, you read that right: TWO)

How may faculty are there in this department? approximately 40 (that’s FORTY)

OK. Well it is end of term and maybe those two are going to visit a lot of schools and really inspire kids to go into CS. Right?

How may schools are they going to? 2 (once again you heard right: TWO; one in the public system and one in the catholic system; one speaker is of course giving the SAME talk at both schools).

How many high schools are there in Calgary? About 20 in the public system, a dozen in the catholic system, PLUS several more in the surrounding districts AND numerous private schools. Let’s be charitable and say about 50.

50 schools, one week; two guys; two talks (OK three, but one is a rerun).

Well, that’s about what I expect from this department. Big talk. No action. So long as they can be seen to look like they’re doing something, they don’t actually have to do anything.

To quote one faculty member, “I don’t have to put up with this shit. I have tenure.”

I guess that means they shouldn’t have to do anything right?

On second thought, I’m grateful this department is so completely self-absorbed that it never notices anything but itself. It’s better that way. I’d rather high school students around here NOT see these people and hear what they think is cool. They’d totally get the wrong idea about where informatics is going.

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Computational Science needs CS Education: But Does It Need CS?

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Computer Science is dead (or should be).

I love reading Mark Guzdial’s blog. He so often talks about things I think are important, AND (perhaps not surprisingly) things about which I have strong opinions. Here’s another:

Computational Science needs CS Education « Computing Education Blog.

Computer science professors may not be great at teaching CS (consider our failure rates in CS1), but we have much greater incentive to get better at it than a Physics or Biology professor.

This is the sort of question (What do people need to know about CS?) I’ve been pondering for some years but I’m not convinced that many CS profs really are motivated to teach CS to “outsiders”. Many consider courses taught to non-majors to be a waste of their ‘talents’, and it is, I think part of the reason that CS programs are having problems. The “service” courses are often taught by un-tenured, temporary faculty who get re-hired as long as their student ratings remain high enough. High ratings are achieved largely by keeping students happy, NOT by teaching them things.

While it is true that the CSEd conferences draw a fair number of people, the number of CS profs who NEVER go to anything like this is far higher.  I also wonder how many people at CS conferences are trying to earn tenure? I realize this may sound cynical but I think if we want to talk about the CS faculty who really care about what and how they are teaching, we need to discount those who are doing things in the area primarily to pad their CVs – and this is not a tiny number, trust me. There are plenty who inexplicably loose interest in this sort of scholarship or become too busy once they have tenure.

Anyhow, just as math profs should NOT be allowed to teach math to non-majors (or decide on curriculum) CS profs should NOT be allowed to teach CS to non majors and they should ESPECIALLY not be allowed to determine the curriculum of courses designed for people who do not intend to major in CS. There are, of course exceptions, but like Mark says, CS professors are not great at teaching CS, so what makes us think they’d be any better at teaching people they care nothing about?

There is an interdisciplinary CS-Art graduate program at a university I know that is an excellent case in point. The CS part of this “team” insists on making fine art take regular programming classes. They teach the same old shit they have always taught in the same old ways they have always taught them. A program like this could be so much more, but rather than create something interdisciplinary, it is treated as a territorial war. I can think of LOTS of important things for students in a program like this to learn and I can think of LOTS of interesting ways to teach that, but the CS department seems to feel the need to put those pesky art students in their place. The art students learn that CS is boring, and that CS knows nothing about art.

Another example. The math department teaches the required discrete math course that is part of a CS degree at the U of Calgary. It is reviled by students, almost universally.  Some members of the CS department as well as many in the math department see this course as a test of fitness for CS students. It is known as a weeder course. But what does it select for? I know senior math majors who could NOT pass this course. I know highly talented programming students who could NOT pass this course. When it was first created in the 80s, several members of the CS department (people who knew a lot about programming) built a curriculum, which the math department ignored.

I was at a curriculum meeting once where both math and CS faculty were talking about this course. The mathematicians were complaining about how hard it was to find a suitable text. I suggested that they should maybe create their OWN notes and exercises, seeing as how they’ve been teaching this course for years. They looked at me like I was from Mars and said, “You CAN’T teach a course without a textbook!”

There’s the problem. They didn’t view the course as a body of material important for future computer scientists to understand; they viewed it as a course to teach. The significance of what they were doing and how it fit into the larger picture that is the education of computer scientists was completely lost on them.

The same is true when you let a CS prof decide what a biologist, or physicist, or analyst, or educational technologist (…) needs to know. A CS prof has, by and large, NO CLUE what someone needs to know about CS in order to use information technology effectively.

Just like education profs often pay no attention to pedagogical content knowledge because they’ve never actually taught a subject other than education, most CS profs have never actually DONE any CS, only research. They don’t actually know how to use their discipline. They know ABOUT (maybe), but not HOW TO.

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Educational Research and the Design Degree

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Mark Guzdial wrote a thoughtful post yesterday that pondered approaches to educational research that fail to address the domain specificity that lies at the core of so many educational challenges.

Computing Education Research vs Real Education Research « Computing Education Blog.

Among other things he mentioned the challenges faced by those of us who have a genuine interest in computer science education. He recalls being questioned by his colleagues for choosing CSEd instead of “real computer science research” (which also made me ponder, what IS real CS research these days? math? engineering? but that’s for another post).

Here is some of what I replied, along with some additional thoughts:

While I have no doubt that these tensions exist between education and most disciplines, I think it is especially acute between CS and Ed. Almost everyone I’ve come across whose formal training was in Ed seems to have a special animosity towards CS. The strongest reactions have come from people in EdTech.

It does of course go both ways. When I was working on my PhD in EdTech while still tenured faculty in CS, my Dean (in Science) actually told me to my face that my PhD would be of no value to him or anyone else in Science. It is part of what convinced me that CS was seriously missing the boat when it came to understanding their place, both in the Academy and in the world at large.

On the other side, the faculty in EdTech had no interest in my perspective on Tech and said (more politely than my Dean, mind you) that CS had nothing to offer them because they already knew all about tech. I’ve talked about this before too. It is not a coincidence that many, if not most race car drivers are mechanics. You can’t be a great driver if you don’t know how your car works. Try talking to an Ed Tech academic about how something actually works as opposed to effusing about some new technology that has just hit the stores.  Their eyes glaze over and they either change the subject or talk about how they are too busy to learn about such details. Besides, they claim, it isn’t germane to their goals. This kind of haughty disinterest is common among people who are pretenders.

When it came to teaching CS, my 25 years of teaching experience seemed of less value to those in Education than a 4-month grad course. The fact that I actually understood the subject matter at a depth that they could not did not seem to affect their sense that they knew how to do this better because they had degrees in Education.

In his post, Mark talked about something called pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Curiously, I never heard that mentioned in any of the Education courses I took while completing my candidacy. I took quite a lot of courses too – to make up for the fact that I had no prior formal training in Education. I took almost enough courses to earn a course-based M.Ed. There was never any acknowledgment of the importance of actually knowing the subject you are trying to teach. I think it is difficult for many in Ed to acknowledge the importance of PCK  because many of them have none themselves. Aside from elementary education, which I see as a special case, most people trained as educators are trained to “Teach” but are NOT trained to teach SOMETHING. Education is a highly applied discipline but it is not usually treated as such. It is often treated as some sort of generic skill – Educators are trained to teach, so, of course, we are supposed to believe they can teach anything.

Is that realistic?

To me it would be like studying to be a “Designer”. We learn about design and how to do design (not unlike learning to manage a business that makes those amazing widgets). What we are designing is secondary, right? Clothes, buildings, machinery, software, weapons systems, or drugs – it’s all the same – it’s all Design, right? All I should need is my Design Degree. While I will freely admit that there are some aspects to design that are similar no matter what you are designing, most of us would agree that if you are going to design weapons systems, you should really know something about weapons systems, and the military, and warfare, and…. If you are going to design software, or clothing, or climbing equipment, or cages for rabbits it’s kind of important to understand software, or fabric and human anatomy, or to know something about climbing, or have raised rabbits.

Which brings me to one of my favorite quandaries:

What does someone in discipline X need to know about discipline Y if they are going to do work that is situated in both domains?

It is one of the questions that really intrigues me and it’s a hard one to answer. It gets exponentially more complex when we are talking about something that combines many disciplines, like Serious Game Design.

Suppose we were trying to teach people how to design educational videogames for example (a subject very close to my heart). I know that my 30 years in CS gives me a perspective that someone with degrees in Ed and EdTech can’t have. I also know that my 30 years of trying to teach (thousands of) people something hard gives me a perspective on teaching that a career academic in Education can’t have. To be fair, my formal training in EdTech and Instructional Design has also helped. But we can’t expect potential educational game designers to go away and spend 30 years doing what I did. So the question is, “Which of those things I know/learned are important for others to learn in order to do this well?”

Always one to try and put my money where my mouth is, I recently embarked on a project to do just that, or at least one facet of that. I am writing a book with Jim Parker on the technical aspects of computer simulations and games. It is written for people who are NOT computer scientists, and who don’t want to be (though my publisher would rather I not say it that way because she’s convinced our audience would likely include people in IT as well). We will explain the ins and outs of computer simulation, without code, and without a lot of math. It will contain the answer to the question: What does someone who is designing, developing, or using a computer simulation or game for learning and development need to know about simulations?

Stay tuned…..

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