Grading W4P2 Research

The quality noticeably increased in this series of posts.

As it has been announced in the tasks – max points for the main post offered 6 points. Replies were not sufficiently deep and the highest grade for a reply was 2.5. Extra work done by some students helped in increasing the grade.

More on AI

Speaking of neural networks... You all heard that the machine is only as smart as the smarts that man puts into it. Well, this is not true. A huge part of modern AI is dedicated to machine learning, when AI systems can learn and become MUCH smarter than all programmers put together. But... they learn differently and their “smarts” might be different from human. For example,the system charged with keeping water in NYC clean might start adding poison to the drinking water after concluding that the problem of dirty water is in human activity. It means that a bunch of other thoughts and moral judgments should be included in the systems that can potentially harm people.

Another anecdotal case of different ways that AI learns was the failure in DoD project, when the system had to take millions of photos made by American spy satellites and find the tanks on those photos. In the final analysis the system was ably to pinpoint tanks on many photos but NOT SEEING the obvious tanks on others. After a long study of human and computer psychologists of the cause of that failure they found out that the system was taught to understand that there is a tank by using photos done during sunny days. In some forms of AI it is possible to check how exactly the learning goes, what is the logic, etc. But in some forms of AI (like neural networks) nobody knows how the system learns and thinks. You just have to TRUST it. So it turned out that in the case of tank recognition system devised its own way (somewhat inhumane) in deciding if there is a tank there – by its shadow! Then if on a gloomy day there was no shadow – there was no tank.

Grading MIS and DSS research

Posts on MIS/DSS were of a much better quality than I expected. I usually give normal grades (7 points) or below that for various problems. All grades during this learning segment ranged from 5 through 7 and up. Thus getting 8 for very good work is really difficult, but some of you managed to get there with quick reaction to critique and good reply work! More than that, very few got 9!!! I gave 9 for good required work and because they doubled the load by producing serious research-replies on the scale of the original post.

Although the difference in 1 or 2 points doesn't seem much compared to what you can loose on the quiz, but it carries additional notes about the effort, merit, attendance, etc., that are important in the final evaluation.

Good job! Repeat the quality in the few remaining research assignments and you can improve your class standing. As you can see, some students are already moving up from where they were...

Commentary to T4.4

Almost all students uunderstood the idea of the use of absolute refernces in parametric formulas and their use in scenario analysis.

Although a number of students wanted to enhance their standing - nobody did additional work in finding what interesting analysis could be done (like break-even analysis suggested by me in the first commentary )... except of Rita's work who did it for iPAD!

Commentary on T3.6

E-Business/Enterprise 2.0 research in T3.6 was done on a pretty decent level. Many students enhanced the quality, definitely using grade-improvement opportunities. The quality of replies has been also improved. Remember that you have one extra day after the deadline to improve your research based on replies to your AND OTHER work. Such additional improvements are very valuable in many aspects...

Keep up the good work. The finishing line is approaching J

MIS and DSS

The main goal of MIS is in allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views and angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. For example when you walk through the College you actually do not see much beyond the walls, offices, and posters. Once you access the College MIS – you immediately see (supposedly) all involved entites and processes in their normal activities and deviations that have to be notices and corrected. Augmented reality allows you to combine physical vision with MIS orientation (this is where the research on MIS and AR will be appropriate!).

Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions based on the vision. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools (especially now available in mobile formats) you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems. I actually run a special course fully dedicated to DSS where students learn the decision theory (on how to always make best decisions in all situations) as well as how to arm yourselves with simple (and more advanced) DSS dramatically enhancing your decision making abilities and outcomes in all your activities. Recently one student email me that he got a job because of this knowledge with which he shocked the potential employers that realized who (WHO!) they were dealing with (answer: superhuman being) :)

You can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools (like spreadsheets in the advanced form of use) that already upgrade your abilities significantly. Some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more you put in work and understanding of the material of this week – the more you will get out of it. This is the way to compete with AI allowing the mankind to stay relevant.

Forum Grading for W3P1

Basically, students showed good research effort and judging by reviews learned a lot of additional stuff complementing the textbook.

At the same time there were some problems that I hope will be avoided in the future posts:

1. Improper format, no bold sections, less than required size and number of references

2. Poor use of the opening and closing statements that are supposed to show the specific focus of the following short research, that cannot be done by just a bunch of poorly related quotes and some own words around them. You need to think what you research will be about, clearly state, research and support your point. The closing statement can not be a quote or a general phrase since has to show what the result of your focused research was, did it accomplish what the opening statement said it would do.

3. Poor response to the reviews (where despite of their general weakness there were some critical notions). Not paying attention to the reviews of other posts that they could have learned from. Many students did not adequately used the time that I gave for improvements. Most of my additional points are reserved for this additional improvement work. Some lost points here ending up below 8-point grade

As a result almost nobody had more than 10 points with quite a number of students having less than that.