OP: Online learning: the benefits outweigh the drawbacks | Western Herald

"Technological advancements have allowed us to accomplish what seemed like impossible tasks a few decades back. Technology has become a part of our everyday life, assisting in every way imaginable." notes Abimbola Jubril. 

Photo: Emily Johnson

We can easily communicate with loved ones, purchase items online and even get a degree, all without being physically present because technology gives us the ability to do so.

Online education has certainly been growing in popularity over the past couple years. Though there are still some negative perceptions about online learning, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.
 
One of the number one reasons why people choose online learning is because of flexibility. Being able to go to school any time anywhere may seem like a dream come true to a college student with an already hectic schedule. Trying to juggle school, work, friends, family extracurricular activities and other commitments can be extremely stressful. Online courses give students the ability to study at a time that is more convenient for them, which makes it easier to accommodate other responsibilities.
 
Online courses also improve your writing and communication skills. In most, if not all online classes, there will be discussion boards once in awhile, if not on a weekly basis. The discussion boards allow students to express thoughts non-verbally. Having more time to reflect on your thoughts will always lead to better answers and even better discussions with others.
 
On the first day of the semester, teachers typically ask students to introduce themselves. If you are a more introverted person, like me and seem to get tongue-tied no matter how many times you speak in front of others, I would recommend you try an online course if you haven’t already. People are more likely to disclose more about themselves in online interactions than they are in face-to-face interactions. This happens because we have more time to think about what we want to say and how it comes off to others, which makes us feel more comfortable sharing our thoughts.
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Source: Western Herald

Pupils explore artificial intelligence | Manawatu Standard

Follow on Twitter as @MiriSchroeter

Miri Schroeter reports, "More than 100 teens have explored the ever-evlolving world of artificial intelligence."

Centre for Science and Citizenship founders Dr Deborah Stevens, left, and Dr Lynne Bowyer.
Photo: Miri Schroeter

The 130 budding young scientists, from Freyberg High School, Manawatu College and Waiopehu College, learned about the benefits and difficulties faced in a technology-rich future at a conference in Levin on Friday.

Mechanical masseuses and construction robots that could work in all weather conditions and give workers a sleep-in were among ideas the pupils – aged 11 to 13 – came up with for the future.

Waiopehu College pupil Sammy Heyward suggested an artificial intelligence machine could replaced police forces.

"It would be good so that police didn't have to go out – so they wouldn't get hurt," she said.

Heyward's classmate Niko Tofa said the girls had a good idea but they were a bit embarrassed about sharing it.

"The girls wanted a robot that could shave their legs," he said.

The conference, organised by the Centre for Science and Citizenship, was aimed at making young minds think about the implications artificial intelligence would have on humans.

Centre co-founder Dr Lynne Bowyer said pupils were encouraged to think critically about the pros and cons of advanced technology.

"What might seem like a good idea on the surface may not be so beneficial."
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Source: Manawatu Standard

Google and Blizzard Will Help Researchers Use Starcraft to Train Artificial Intelligence | Fortune

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Follow on twitter as @davidzmorris

"Insights from gameplay could help with real-world AI applications." summarizes David Z. Morris, has been contributing to Fortune since 2013, writing frequently about technology.

Photo: Fortune

At this week’s BlizzCon convention in California, game developer Blizzard announced that it would release tools to allow third parties to teach artificial intelligences to play the real-time wargame Starcraft II. The tools are being developed in collaboration with Google’s DeepMind team, and will use the DeepMind platform.

In a blog post accompanying the announcement, the DeepMind team said Starcraft “is an interesting testing environment for current AI research because it provides a useful bridge to the messiness of the real world.” The game involves interconnected layers of decisions, as players use resources to build infrastructure and assets before engaging in direct combat.

StarCraft’s complexity when compared to Chess or Go, then, makes it closer to the real-world problems faced by computers which do things like plan logistics networks. Those complex systems still present serious challenges for even the most powerful computers, and insights gleaned from StarCraft could help make their solutions faster and more efficient.
One of the most interesting parts of StarCraft’s “messiness” is its use of incomplete information as a gameplay parameter. Much of each player’s vision is obscured by a ‘fog of war,’ forcing players to predict one another’s decisions while planning their own. That’s a challenge not faced by developers of artificial intelligence for Chess, for instance, where the whole board is visible at once.

Another major difference between StarCraft and games like Chess and Go, which computer agents have become increasingly adept at, is that StarCraft unfolds in real time, rather than by turns.
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Source: Fortune

Weapons of Math Destruction | Books | The Guardian

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Photo: Mona Chalabi

Mona Chalabi writes, ""People keep suggesting that democracy is alive and well because we have two parties that don’t agree on everything. I think that’s total bullshit." When you meet Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist and author, you quickly discover she isn’t exactly convinced about the health of the US’s electoral system."

Weapons of Math Destruction:
How Big Data Increases Inequality
and Threatens Democracy

A Harvard PhD graduate in mathematics and actively involved in the Occupy movement, O’Neil’s experience is crucial to her new book: Weapons of Math Destruction describes the way that math can be manipulated by biases and affect every aspect of our lives.

As well as questioning the two-party system in the US, she’s also looked at how mathematics has been used in the housing and banking sector to affect our lives via her blog mathbabe for more than a decade. So what’s her problem with good old American democracy in 2016?

“Democracy is more than a two-party system. It’s an informed public and that’s what’s at risk,” she says. “The debates are where you would hope to find out real information, but they’re just talking about their dick size … The algorithms are making it harder and harder to get good information.” And algorithms, rule-based processes for solving mathematical problems, are being applied to more and more areas of our lives.

This idea is at the heart of O’Neil’s thinking on why algorithms can be so harmful. In theory, mathematics is neutral – two plus two equals four regardless of what anyone wishes the answer was. But in practice, mathematical algorithms can be formulated and tweaked based on powerful interests.

O’Neil saw those interests first hand when she was a quantitative analyst on Wall Street. Starting in 2007, O’Neil spent four years in finance, two of them working for a hedge fund. There she saw the use of weapons of math destruction, a term O’Neil uses to describe “algorithms that are important, secret and destructive”. The algorithms that ultimately caused the financial crisis meet all of those criteria – they affected large numbers of people, were entirely opaque and destroyed lives.

“I left disgusted by finance because I thought of it as a rigged system and it was rigged for the insiders,” says O’Neil. “I was ashamed by that – as a mathematician I love math and I think math is a tool for good.”

Among the many examples of powerful formulas that O’Neil cites in her book, political polling doesn’t come up, even though this election cycle has made polling’s power more talked about than ever before. So is it dangerous? Could polling be a weapon of math destruction?

She pauses – “I’m not sure” – then she pauses some more. “I think polling is a weapon of math destruction,” she says. “Nobody really understands it, it’s incredibly widespread and powerful.” We discuss the success of Nate Silver, the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight (a site I spent almost two years working at). Silver has positioned himself as one of the few people who does understand polling, and as such he’s been christened as a soothsayer and savant. We’re desperate for math answers, which is part of the reason we ended up here, according to O’Neil...

O’Neil’s book explains how other mathematical models do a similar thing – such as the ones used to measure the likelihood an individual will relapse into criminal behavior. When someone is classed as “high risk”, they’re more likely to get a longer sentence and find it harder to find a job when they eventually do get out. That person is then more likely to commit another crime, and so the model looks like it got it right.
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Source: The Guardian 

New Isle of Man IT campus blends ‘bootcamp’ with computer science degree | IDG Connect

Kathryn Cave, Editor at IDG Connect notes, "We visit the Isle of Man’s new IT campus housed in an old nunnery." 

Photo: IDG Connect

The small propeller plane skims low over the Irish Sea to touch down onto the tiny landing strip of Ronaldsway Airport. This is the Isle of Man. A 221 square mile Crown Dependency situated between the UK mainland and Ireland. It is probably most famous for the TT motorcycle race which does a lap out of the circumference each year. The other thing it is most known for is its favourable tax conditions.

I’m visiting for the launch of its new IT campus. Developed as a public and private partnership between University College of Man (UCM) and International Centre for Technology (ICT), this aims to provide a funnel for the IT skills needed on the island. Because contrary to the bucolic scenes of rolling green countryside and cows grazing near the airport, the Isle of Man has excellent IT infrastructure. This includes 100% broadband penetration (to a population of 85,000), five tier three datacentres and good renewable power, the excess of which is sold on to the National Grid. This and the tax breaks makes it an ideal home for a wide range of technology companies.  
 
'In a potted history Brian Donegan, Head of Operations for the Isle of Man Government’s eBusiness and FinTech Innovation, explains that although the island has been a financial services centre since the 1970s, in the early noughties it looked to diversity and became a hub for eGaming. This now makes up 19% of the economy and because of it the island had to learn to mitigate the risks so “became very good at regulation”.
 
“That was the beginning of digital businesses,” he says. FinTech especially has emerged into this slipstream and the Isle of Man is becoming a bit of a leader for digital currency businesses. Credits – which was recently awarded a contract to supply its Blockchain-as-a-Service offering to the UK public sector – is based on the island and trialled its service here first.
 
“These businesses need people,” says Donegan. Or as Mark Gerhard, CEO of small gaming company Play Fusion, puts it: “Organisations have to go where the talent is.” 
 
The new campus is housed in an old nunnery – which looks like a castle – and plans to tackle this skills shortage head on. It offers an incentive for local school leavers to stay on the island to complete their tertiary education and aims to deliver a steam of qualified talent for local businesses. Part of the appeal for youngsters and businesses alike is the facility will look to run business and IT degrees along with useable vocational skills.
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Source: IDG Connect 

Professor Nancy Hingston named Fellow of the American Mathematical Society | The College of New Jersey News

"Dr. Nancy Hingston, Professor of Mathematics at TCNJ, has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) for 2017, the program’s fifth year." inform College of New Jersey News.

Photo: Nancy Hingston

Only 65 mathematical scientists from around the world have been awarded this honor for 2017.

The Fellows of the AMS designation recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics.  Professor 

Hingston was recognized for her contributions to differential geometry and the study of closed geodesics.

Among the goals of the program are to create an enlarged class of mathematicians recognized by their peers as distinguished because of their contributions to the profession, and to honor excellence.

Source: The College of New Jersey News

AI Expert: “Artificial Intelligence Does Not Justify Basic Income” | Futurism

"Duke professor says AI is not yet capable of replacing human labor." writes Eleazer Corpuz.
 

Photo: Getty Images

An Opposing View Numerous researchers have predicted how a lot of jobs could be taken over by automation in the near future, potentially leading to massive unemployment. The numbers and timeline vary — some reports say it could be 7 percent of jobs in the next decade, others predict 850,000 jobs by 2030 — and indeed, one could argue that it is already happening.

The advent of automation has brought with it experts in various fields advocating for a universal basic income (UBI) to help people through their potential unemployment brought about by artificial intelligence (AI). Proponents argue that giving every citizen a lump sum of money could solve poverty while those on the other side of the argument insist that it could hurt the taxpayers more.

Now, one person particularly well-suited to weigh in on the discussion has said that current advancements in AI don’t justify the implementation of a UBI.

Vincent Conitzer, a professor of computer science, economics, and philosophy at Duke University, says in an MIT article that while current advances in the field of AI have been impressive, the tech still couldn’t replace a human being at most jobs. He argues that current AI systems have difficulty in understanding social norms and cannot pick up on subtle social cues. He points to an AI’s difficulty in language as an example:

Current AI systems do not have a broad understanding of the world, including our social conventions, and they lack common sense. Language understanding is a good example of the problem; it is remarkably hard to get computers to answer many types of simple questions.

Conitzer also argues that current AI systems do not yet have the capability of true abstraction, saying that they cannot examine their own reasoning and generalize what’s going on. It is because of this that he sees AI as not being creative enough. He uses Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and DeepDream to point out that the ability of these systems to think outside the box “is not the kind of creativity that truly gives one a new perspective on the situation at hand.”

All in all, Conitzer says, AI systems have difficulty working in the real world. An AI worker may be able to do a specific, well-defined job sufficiently, but it still cannot replace a person who can do similar tasks in a messier real world. Therefore, he does not see the need for a basic income yet.
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Source: Futurism

CONVERSATIONS IN EDUCATION: Best paying college majors | Delco News Network

Part of the college selection process includes selecting a major, a decision that may be based on curiosity, family tradition or passion for a field of study. Choosing a career based on earning potential offers another credible selection criteria, according to Dr. Joe Giampalmi, assistant professor at Rowan University’s Department of Writing Arts.

Photo: GraphicStock.com

Allison Berry’s “50 Highest Paying College Majors” (Glassdoor.com) lists the top 50 highest paying majors. Berry’s list is based on an analysis of 500,000 resumes in the first five years of working that included medium-based salaries and corresponding employee data.

“If college students want to land a high-paying job after graduation, they should strongly consider majoring in science, technology, engineering, or math,” said Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor chief economist.

The top five listed majors with the fifth year medium-based salary are: 1. Computer Science ($70,000)

2. Electrical Engineering ($68,438)

3. Mechanical Engineering ($68,000)

4. Chemical Engineering ($65,000)

5. Industrial Engineering ($64,381).

Majors in the area of business listed in the top half of the list included: 11. Finance ($54,900), 14. Accounting ($52,000), 15. Economics ($52,000), 20. Business ($47,850), 21. International Relations ($45,880) and 23. Marketing ($45,475).
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Source: Delco News Network

University of the Third Age (U3A) fosters lifelong learning | New Zealand Herald

Photo: Juliet Rowan

"Keeping the mind active in the "third age"" summarizes Juliet Rowan, reporter for Bay of Plenty Times Weekend.

Rotorua U3A president Peter Wood says belonging to the lifelong learning group is a great way to keep the mind active and meet like-minded people. 
Photo/Stephen Parker

Always wanted to learn Spanish, study art history, or join a book club?

Maybe you'd like to discuss philosophy or science, go walking with others, or have a go at photography or crochet?

The reasons for lifelong learning are compelling and as a growing body of research shows, both mental and physical fitness are crucial to wellbeing as the body ages.

The University of the Third Age is an international movement dedicated to lifelong learning and gives participants a chance to pursue interests in the company of others.

The movement, known as U3A, is flourishing in the Bay of Plenty among people in the "third age" - the stage of life after the first age of childhood and the second age of full-time work and parental responsibility.

Bay wide, U3A groups hold regular meetings in people's homes, cafes, restaurants, churchs, halls and the outdoors, members learning from one another.

There are book and film clubs, history discussions, music appreciation, crafts, walking groups, photography and more.

In Rotorua, U3A has more than 300 members and almost 30 groups, including Pacific Studies, a Grey Warblers choral group, and Knitting and Crochet Enthusiasts.

Those with a passion for food have created an ethnic dining group.

Peter Wood is president of U3A Rotorua and says the organisation is enjoying its highest membership yet.

It has grown to 320 members and he says always welcomes more.

"It's a great opportunity to keep your mind active once you retire and meet interesting people who have a similar attitude to life."

Peter is a retired geologist who spent his career working in volcanology and geothermal exploration for Crown instiutes.

Now in his mid 70s, he convenes Rotorua U3A's philosophy group and is also a member of the Pacific Studies and walking groups.

The Pacific Studies group has discussed topics including Polynesian colonisation of the Pacific, while the walking group takes walks in the countryside up to 2.5 hours long.

The walks happen within a 20 minute drive of Rotorua and Peter says they vary in difficulty, the easier ones on the 2nd Friday of each month and the harder ones on the 4th.

In his philosophy group, Peter says they tackle topics such as euthanasia in their meetings, which also happen bi-monthly.

"It's practical philosophy of life stuff rather than dealing with old philosophers such as Aristotle. The idea of the philosophy group is to make people think."

Membership to U3A Rotorua is $10 per year and bi-monthly members' meetings are held in the bridge club rooms at Neil Hunt Park on Tarawera Rd.
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Source: New Zealand Herald  

7 Tips for Getting More out of LinkedIn Learning | LinkedIn - The Learning Blog

Photo: Lindsey Shintani

Lindsey Shintani , Product Marketing at LinkedIn inform, "LinkedIn Learning is a tool designed to take you places – namely, to that dream job you’ve always wanted, by teaching you the skills you need to get there."

Photo: LinkedIn - The Learning Blog

But, like any tool, there are best practices to getting more out of it. To help you, we came up with seven tips that’ll ensure you get the absolute most out of LinkedIn Learning, and make your experience with the platform a transformative one.
They are:

1. Take classes!
This one seems obvious, but the absolute best way to get the most out of LinkedIn Learning is to actually take classes within the 5,000+ course library.

I get it, we’re all busy. But remember – each class is broken into bite-sized chunks and they can be watched anytime, anywhere, on any device, online or offline. So take that free time on your commute on the train or on a lazy Sunday and make the investment in yourself for learning.

You’ll thank yourself later.
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Enjoy LinkedIn Learning!

Source: LinkedIn - The Learning Blog