<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">kirby urner</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kirby.urner@gmail.com">kirby.urner@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 10:53 PM<br>Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] off-topic: teachable Moore's Law moment coming<br>To: Andy Judkis <<a href="mailto:ajudkis@verizon.net">ajudkis@verizon.net</a>><br><br><br>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.<div>
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<div>Kirby</div></font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Andy Judkis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ajudkis@verizon.net" target="_blank">ajudkis@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
This isn't Python-related, but things have been quiet here lately and I figure we can spare the bandwidth. . .<br>
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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.<br>
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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 <a href="http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/a-system-designed-for-answers.html" target="_blank">http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/a-system-designed-for-answers.html</a><br>
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There's also an episode of PBS's Nova about Watson that aired earlier this week, available on-line: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html" target="_blank">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html</a><br>
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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.<br>
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Thanks,<br>
Andy<br>
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