Comments on: Great Lessons: Evan Weinberg’s “Do You Know Blue?”

By: Joe Boyer

Joe Boyer — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 04:17:38 +0000

It’s great that it’s working now, but it’s not really working properly. The “Or” function is broken, and without that it’s pretty difficult to get a score above 80%. Any function with “OR” just gives a blank value.

Feature request: I also wish there was a way to jump straight to the challenge bit of coming up with the rule, so when we revisit it in class the next day the students don’t have to go through all the intro bit.

By: Joe Boyer

Joe Boyer — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 02:19:05 +0000

I loved this and used it with several classes, but now it seems broken and won’t load. Was it just a temporary thing?

By: Four short links: 24 May 2013 | GenerateJob.com

Four short links: 24 May 2013 | GenerateJob.com — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:22:59 +0000

[…] Great Lessons: Evan Weinberg’s “Do You Know Blue?” (Dan Meyer) — It’s a bridge from math to computer science. Students get a chance to write algorithms in a language understood by both mathematicians and the computer scientists. It’s analogous to the Netflix Prize for grown-up computer scientists. […]

By: Blog Entry #4 (dy/dan) | Steph's Blogarithm

Blog Entry #4 (dy/dan) | Steph's Blogarithm — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 05:44:42 +0000

[…] 7, 2013Blog:Â /?p=17112Blog Post Title:Â Great Lessons: Evan Weinberg’s “Do You Know […]

By: Klaus

Klaus — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:58:36 +0000

loved the project.
Started to wonder though if everything is properly coded.
I used an approach via HSV, creating an inequality that kept the Hue value H between 180 and 260. This worked for 87% of the given examples, but my score was only 57% when the formula was tested on all 4000 combinations. I redid it with another sample of 30 colors. same thing. Strange.

another things that was odd, was that among the examples there were no colors that were judged not blue between 60% and 100% of the time.
and one judged not blue 100% of the time was so close to blue (to my eyes) that i had a hard time believing the data.

By: Nicora Placa

Nicora Placa — Wed, 29 May 2013 17:18:42 +0000

I study student learning, so I’d be interested to learn more about how the students are learning as they go through the activity. It would probably require interviewing the students in some way. It would also be interesting to look at how teachers are using the lesson with their classes.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 28 May 2013 15:47:02 +0000

@Nicora, no plans at the moment. What research questions do you have about it?

By: Evan Weinberg

Evan Weinberg — Tue, 28 May 2013 11:13:35 +0000

Hi all,

I want to publicly thank Dan and Dave for pushing this idea forward. It was a lot of fun doing it with my students, but the excitement they have had around making this an interactive activity for any student with a web browser has really opened my eyes to the potential of the medium.

If you haven’t yet been convinced to learn to code, consider the fact that doing so might lead to making this sort of experience for your own students the way you want it. There are so many great ideas out there that deserve to built and shared. The technology and the people to help you learn are all out there. Take advantage of it.

Evan

By: Nicora

Nicora — Mon, 27 May 2013 18:38:06 +0000

I love this. What a neat idea. Are you planning on doing any research on it?

By: Mr. Steve

Mr. Steve — Mon, 27 May 2013 03:10:37 +0000

Another nice follow up on this would be can you tell and Orange from a Lemon, where they are given width and length of each. Then they have the kids plot the values on an X-Y plane. After they have done this ask them to draw a line that would separate the oranges from the lemons. You could also ask them to think about how to draw a line to maximize the “margin of safety.”

I think I will try this with my kids over the next few weeks.

Thanks to my friend Joseph for the idea