Category: Data+Kids

Papa, but I don’t want the computers to be smarter than us

So, I have been reading a bit about 4IR, artificial intelligence and a few related topics and obviously some of that conversation seeps in when I am having some chats with my kids.

The other day, we were chatting about how advancements in technology can make the life of humans easier and I believe it was a interesting paragraph from the book “AI Superpowers” by Kai-Fu Lee that I might have been reading to them (I thought they would find that bit amusing) when my 10 yr old goes

“but Papa, I don’t want the computers to be smarter than us”

I had to pause, take a moment and break away from the book for a bit and then have a chat with them and we talked about how computers are already better than humans at many things. We talked about being smart or intelligent is very subjective. How we tell a computer to do something for us will decide what it will end up doing.

The conversation got a bit awkward and it sort of escaped the initial intent of her question.

It’s been on mind since…

We sometimes talk about a few other elements of artificial intelligence and computer algorithms
but I have been thinking of making those concepts more accessible to my kids so they can grasp the concepts in a way that when they grow up, they are a bit better equipped to understand the positive and adverse impacts of technology. Ultimately, (I hope) affect the world in more positive ways by taking some time to think about application of technology to better the human experience.

Unlike, what many social networks have done...

Please feel free to connect with me to share how your conversations with your kids are shaping up as it relates to technology

How to leverage the “Scientific Method” to solve real world problems

Kids teach us every day, only if we are willing to listen.
In this episode we will cover what my daughter taught me over the weekend

A great chat with my daughter who teaches me The Scientific Method

What comes to Mind when I say Data?

When we started with discussion about Data, it was sort of like we jumped into Tableau because my kids have seen me use Data in Tableau. So, it felt like we just jumped ahead.
In this episode, we decided to just talk about Data in general.
The discussion led to talking about fairness in decision making and also a bit about presidential elections.
Hope you enjoy this one

Chapter 7: Q and A with kids: Discussion on TRUST and Bar Graphs

So, we are continuing our learning about Data using Tableau and we adopted a new format for the last few sessions with my daughters.

In short, our format is that the kids watch me work on some dashboard that is part of my daily work, they make observations and ask me questions along the way. They found this to be more useful to get some additional learning

By the way, very interesting topic about Data and TRUST that one of my girls brought up and we chatted for a few minutes about that

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Chapter 6: Calculated fields with Tableau

It’s not always that your data EXACTLY the way you need. Infact, many a times, you don’t have much of the data in your dataset

However, often, what you are looking for is available in your dataset in a different form. And, that’s when we can use calculated fields to build new ways of looking at our data. These calculated fields are new blocks from existing blocks of information we already have. We discussed that in our next session with the olympics data

As a quick reminder, here is the link to our main project page and don’t forget to sign-up if you would like to get emails when we publish another blog