Having a hard time understanding where to start on this lesson. Not understanding the point systems that the students are supposed to develop and rules that needs to be made.
Erin,
I agree this is confusing. Basically the lesson is showing students how decisions are made for computers just by using numbers. The warm up activity has the students develop an algorithm for getting dressed, but the computer doesn’t know “shoes” it knows numbers. So the idea is that you’d attach a number to the three pairs of shoes (1/2/3) and if it’s raining, you’d choose rain boots that would be equal to 1, if it’s sunny you’d choose flip flops that would be equal to 2, etc…
So the activity guide has four locations, beach, big city, national park, and amusement park that has a similar system - adding points based on what the students like (ice cream, flying, wolves, etc…) and then producing a decision based on the points - much like the algorithm for getting dressed.
As the last lesson of Unit 5, this is meant to push students even further - as they are starting to understand abstraction and number representation to help us talk to computers - now we can use that language to help the computer make a decision.
Once the worksheet is completed (points based on beach/amusement park/national park/ big city) the students can then ask people questions that don’t have anything to do with the location - but will add points to that location and give the “user” that vacation spot.
Take National Park as an example, out of the four food choices (ice cream, pizza, sandwich, salad) I would say that sandwiches would be associated with National Park because its the easiest to eat. With the animal choice, the wolf would be the best for national park, and of the superpower would be a discussion - but I would say maybe “Super Strength” to be able to clear fallen trees (? that might be a reach).
If a user picks those three, it would add points based on those choices and then if (userChoices > 11) { display National Park } would print out.
Hope that helps!
Brad
I agree that the activity is confusing.
If you assign each place (beach, park, big city, and national park) a number, then how would they know the difference between the number assigned and the ratings (adding points).? The instructions have a sample given: “Add 2 points to beach. Add 1 point to amusement park.”
Mrs. Suarez,
This would happen in the setup of your quiz. A simple way to do this would be create the quiz so that the first answer of every question corresponds to a location. So if the person selected the first answer on every question, they would always be adding points to the “National Park” option (as an example). More advanced quizzes would have aid’s that could gather that information, but for this exercise you’re really focused on the number representation part.
Hope that helps (a little…)
Brad