[Edu-sig] Fwd: off-topic: teachable Moore's Law moment coming

[kirby urner]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: kirby urner <kirby.urner at 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 <ajudkis at 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 <ajudkis at 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
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