If we assume girls aren't capable of doing computing, we won't give them the opportunity to learn computing.
Category: Uncategorized
The difference between climate change and the threat of nuclear war
"I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. Carl Sagan told us it was inevitable. It didn't happen, and we're not worried about nuclear war anymore, so obviously panicking about climate change is the same - in a few years we'll realise there was nothing to be scared of. It's not the crisis we think it is." I completely understand the attractiveness of this theory. "We are under threat. That's scary. But we were under threat before and that turned out to be nothing, so this one will too, right? RIGHT? PLEASE??"
Using Data Science to investigate discrimination – Part 1, Mobility
What I love about projects like this is the opportunity for students to consider issues that don't normally impact them, and then quantify them, and come up with ways to improve those numbers.
The little chatbot that couldn’t
Chatbots are not capable of understanding, or analysis, or even differentiating between truth and fiction. All they can do is fit together something that looks like language. Which makes it desperately worrying when teachers use them for marking, lawyers use them for coming up with arguments to use in court, or they get used for anything requiring analysis or accuracy.
At the Mercy of the Algorithm
In the recent flurry of political grandstanding about banning social media for children under 16, we seem to be taking for granted the idea that social media has to behave the way it does, be what it is. That these dark and frightening rabbit holes are a necessary part of the social media experience. An unavoidable consequence of the technology.