Comments on: Kid Stuff http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/03/23/kid-stuff/ Culture, Politics, Academia and Other Shiny Objects Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:54:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: sibyl http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/03/23/kid-stuff/comment-page-1/#comment-6467 sibyl Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:06:08 +0000 http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=777#comment-6467 "As my daughter said, ??I don??t think I??m allowed to see anything else about those characters, am I Daddy??? " They probably prided themselves on the fact that they refrained from giving away Silk Spectre posters. “As my daughter said, ??I don??t think I??m allowed to see anything else about those characters, am I Daddy??? ”

They probably prided themselves on the fact that they refrained from giving away Silk Spectre posters.

]]> By: David Chudzicki http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2009/03/23/kid-stuff/comment-page-1/#comment-6394 David Chudzicki Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:57:54 +0000 http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=777#comment-6394 I was recently at the science museum in Boston. Certainly pretty kid-oriented, but I and the adults I was with still found enough to have a good time. (I always love the thing with the balls falling through the slots to make a bell curve, showing that when you sum a bunch of independent probability distributions you get a normal distribution. I always wondered if there might be a demonstration to make the point more generally.) There was an exhibit about how 'fads' spread, with a computational model showing actors moving around a 2D-screen to make the point that fads don't need any kind of central director. But we were disapointed to not find any description of what rules this little actors in the simulation were acting buy. Couldn't kids understand at least a simplified description of whatever was going on? Especially with help from the adult they're with? If we aren't told more about the model, aren't they kind of failing to make the point? The dots on the computer screen are then almost as much of a mystery as real human actors. Of course, it was kind of fun trying to back-engineer the thing, but then we got frustrated and gave up. I was recently at the science museum in Boston. Certainly pretty kid-oriented, but I and the adults I was with still found enough to have a good time. (I always love the thing with the balls falling through the slots to make a bell curve, showing that when you sum a bunch of independent probability distributions you get a normal distribution. I always wondered if there might be a demonstration to make the point more generally.)

There was an exhibit about how ‘fads’ spread, with a computational model showing actors moving around a 2D-screen to make the point that fads don’t need any kind of central director. But we were disapointed to not find any description of what rules this little actors in the simulation were acting buy.

Couldn’t kids understand at least a simplified description of whatever was going on? Especially with help from the adult they’re with? If we aren’t told more about the model, aren’t they kind of failing to make the point? The dots on the computer screen are then almost as much of a mystery as real human actors. Of course, it was kind of fun trying to back-engineer the thing, but then we got frustrated and gave up.

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