Building the future with weapons of maths construction
This event took place on Thursday 18 November 2004 at 12:30
Prof. Harold Thimbleby Computer Science Department, University of Wales, United Kingdom
Computers are complex, unreliable and occasionally dangerous. What can be done?
Familiar handheld calculators represent a microcosm of how computers are used, misused and misunderstood - and how we are stuck in the past. Calculators are so popular we hardly think about them. Indeed, desktop PCs, both Macintosh and Windows - powerful computers - simulate them, presumably because nobody has thought of any better ways of working.
Yet try working out 4x-5 on almost any calculator, and you will get -1; not the correct answer by any means! There are clearly some assumptions at play that need questioning.
This talk explores the problems --- how they affect school teaching and how we should teach university computer science. More importantly than pointing out problems, though, the talk will go beyond today's calculators to demonstrate a novel approach that will change the way we interact with computers. The new approach not only gets the maths right, but can be used on handheld devices or in the classroom, and is surprisingly engaging to use.
Please bring your own calculator, PDA or mobile phone to join in!
This talk will be of interest to anyone whose work involves a calculator or computer, including teachers, lecturers, and especially mathematicians and computer scientists.
This event took place on Thursday 18 November 2004 at 12:30
Computers are complex, unreliable and occasionally dangerous. What can be done?
Familiar handheld calculators represent a microcosm of how computers are used, misused and misunderstood - and how we are stuck in the past. Calculators are so popular we hardly think about them. Indeed, desktop PCs, both Macintosh and Windows - powerful computers - simulate them, presumably because nobody has thought of any better ways of working.
Yet try working out 4x-5 on almost any calculator, and you will get -1; not the correct answer by any means! There are clearly some assumptions at play that need questioning.
This talk explores the problems --- how they affect school teaching and how we should teach university computer science. More importantly than pointing out problems, though, the talk will go beyond today's calculators to demonstrate a novel approach that will change the way we interact with computers. The new approach not only gets the maths right, but can be used on handheld devices or in the classroom, and is surprisingly engaging to use.
Please bring your own calculator, PDA or mobile phone to join in!
This talk will be of interest to anyone whose work involves a calculator or computer, including teachers, lecturers, and especially mathematicians and computer scientists.
Future Internet
KnowledgeManagementMultimedia &
Information SystemsNarrative
HypermediaNew Media SystemsSemantic Web &
Knowledge ServicesSocial Software
Social Software is...
Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.
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