---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: kirby urner <kirby.ur...@gmail.com> Date: Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 10:53 PM Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] off-topic: teachable Moore's Law moment coming To: Andy Judkis <ajud...@verizon.net>
I've been watching these videos hand bringing Watson up in conversation. This wasn't much talked about on other lists I'm following, so from my point of view, thanks for making edu-sig your geocache. Kirby On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Andy Judkis <ajud...@verizon.net> wrote: > This isn't Python-related, but things have been quiet here lately and I > figure we can spare the bandwidth. . . > > I'm really excited about the upcoming Jeopardy! shows next week (Mon-Wed) > with champion human players facing off against IBM's Watson. It's been a > great opportunity to get students to think about what Moore's law means, and > how computer technology is likely to affect their lives over the next few > decades. Obviously the IBM hype machine is in overdrive, but I think they've > earned the right. > > In my class, we were just discussing how chips are not getting faster these > days because of thermal problems, but are still getting more powerful in > their ability to do parallel computation, and what that means. IBM has a > very good not-too-technical video on their site about how this applies to > their system > http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/a-system-designed-for-answers.html > > There's also an episode of PBS's Nova about Watson that aired earlier this > week, available on-line: > http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html > > I know that my kids are always surprised and excited to see stuff that we > do in class have some relevance in the real world, and this is the best > alignment I've ever encountered. > > Thanks, > Andy > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >
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