Thoughts on Marking Schemes

I realized that the marking scheme of this blog system is getting more detailed and precise as the course goes. Here, I am expressing my concern over this.

I used to think iEFX as a place where creativity is encouraged and ideas gets combined and improved synergetically. I hope it still is, but the use of detailed marking schemes to mark these blog posts are taking us away from these ideals. I grew up in a place where the education system sees the marking scheme as the holy grail, to the extent that "marking schemes are always right". In this system, everything that is not strictly adhered to the marking scheme are considered wrong. You and I know better, something not in the scheme is not necessarily wrong. No one believed energy is the same thing as mass when it was proved.

We do not want marking schemes to get in place which kills real innovative ideas, leaving behind only the exact same way of thinking for our next generation. This is a molding education system in which all sorts of people go in but everyone comes out looking the same. We don't want this because we value diversity.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

On the other end, marking schemes cannot reveal the true ability of a student. Why? Because these schemes can be reverse engineered. I can give you a similar marking scheme for any question in the world. I can tailor-made my answers to the marking schemes to ensure I get the maximum possible score I can have.

There are indeed courses that need marking schemes, like mathematics and sciences, which require precise technical skills and high accuracy together with professional notations in which students have to learn to communicate in that language (the language of physics, the language of mathematics). There are significantly clearer rights or wrongs in these subjects.

But not in iEFX, not in a course which "missing basics" are emphasized. Not in a course which is supposed to draw on the students' creativity.

Correct me if I am wrong on what I think iEFX is. I hope you don't make me regret joining iEFX.

Listening

In this assignment I am required to empathetically listen to another person for 45 minutes. The listening here is not in the strict definition where I just listen and not talk at all. It is quite the opposite. I have to use techniques like asking questions, mirroring, paraphrasing and hypothesizing. Besides that, we also have to Agree, Build and Compare to points addressed.

Listening is not a good word for this. You realize that all of the skills is not in how you listen, but how you respond. Interrogate is more accurate in meaning, but definitely not in connotation. After all, you goal is to understand what someone is thinking. Whether it is an emotion, a feeling, an idea, an opinion or anything else. You just want to understand, because that is what the listenee wants. Empathetic listening is about quality, not quantity. 45 minutes can't guarantee you understand everything the listenee wants to express, but sometimes the listenee just doesn't want to talk that long.

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What I have dealt with is one of the most difficult situation on Earth. I was talking to a friend on phone, and she said she hate her mother because her mother is annoying and scold her all the time and even mock about her academic results. She was very frustrated. I would like to calm her down, but I can't entirely agree on what she said, because this will add fuel to her hatred to her mother. (Luckily I knew it's not really hate, but a moment of frustration). Still, I have to calm her down. I asked her about the thing that lead her to such frustration. She was unwilling to share at first, but after I try to make some assertions, guessing what the situation was, she told me that her mother scold her because she was not studying despite the fact that she was studying all day.

What I did is I spoke from her standpoint, agreeing to what she said (her mother is XXXX annoying) while playing down her emotions. I understand her frustration because I have been in similar situations before, except the fact that I was able to keep myself calm and keep my emotions out of it. I drew a comparison to the situation I had before, and she felt I really understand. I told her how I dealt with the situation and urged her to do the same. Keep calm and stay out of it. She followed what I said and calmed down.

In this situation, I used a lot of the"listening not listening" skills (AMPP and ABC), to empathize her. But the fact is even elementary school students know this. They always ask questions, they compare each others points, built on each other, and mimic what their teacher said etc. What they do not know is that when there is some disagreement between you and the listenee, you don't have to say it directly, but you can ask more about it the understand more. You can draw comparisons to indirectly show your point. This way your voice is much more acceptable to the listenee, and you can understand more about them.

Companion post: Presentation box

This post is not about the ENG198 assignment. This is just to share the idea to anyone interested.

The presentation box is a box that encapsulates small processing power to decode a powerpoint and communicate with your mobile device via WiFi.

After you have completed your presentation slides, you upload your presentation to the device, and then the device will display your slides. The slide changes according to the inputs given from the mobile device (e.g. swipe across the screen to change slides)

Basically, as the displaying device is a dedicated one, the probability for the presentation to go wrong decreases significantly. You won't see a blank screen because your device ran out of battery, and you can take hold of your presentation device (e.g. iPhone/iPad/Android smartphone). It can display notes and other things you don't want your audience to see. And they are connected wirelessly without
power consuming wireless display technology.

Though technical specifications may change, but I dream the "presentation box" as about the size of a hard drive (3.5") so it can be carried around easily, while packing processing power similar to a smartphone. It should possess a USB port for downloading presentation files, WiFi obviously to communicate with the host device. Video output ports (HDMI and VGA) for outputting and a power port to provide steady power supply. Battery is optional, but I prefer it to be not included, so the device can be more compact and people will stay on more reliable power source.

Video blog - Engineered object

A video is made up of thousands of pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words. 

video > 1,000,000 words :-)

Click here to view the video:

Toulmin's model for arguments

Toulmin's model for arguments divides arguments into five critical components, namely ground, warrant, backing, qualifier and claim. They align in a order similar to the one below.

However, I want to point out that Toulmin's model is designed to analyze human arguments, not for either scientific proof or seeking solutions. This model cannot operate when we don't have a claim, an assumption or a hypothesis to work with in the first place. This is exactly what Toulmin thought about developing an argument, which should be started with a claim and then proving it, as opposed to looking at the grounds we have a extending outwards. 

To prove my point, I will use two examples of problems I faced. 

The first is a problem from my calculus course. (I assume as engineers, everyone here knows about calculus) I want to find out what is the derivative of x^x. If I use the Toulmin's model now, I will start with the claim. But then I have no idea what the derivative is, I cannot claim or hypothesize anything. I tried to looking at the graph, but from what I learnt, I have no idea what the derivative is. Although I do have the grounds, which are the definition of derivative and the rules of differentiation, I won't know what to put in all the other boxes, because the warrant is the bridge between ground and the claim. You cannot build a bridge without land on the other side, right?

Now I am stuck here, essentially helpless. I can try to guess something and use the Toulmin's model to try to prove it, but the probability that I will get the correct answer is very small. This method of trial and error is not very effective and will take me decades to solve a simple question like that. 

Graph of y=x^x from Wolfram Alpha

Of course, all of you who have taken Calculus know that the answer is y' = x^x(ln x + 1). But my point is that the Toulmin's model is not designed for, and not useful in solving problems which we cannot come up with a reasonable hypothesis. 

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The second one is Collatz conjecture. You who have read my previous post should know what it is, it is an unsolved mathematical problem. The problem is to prove that for any positive integer I put into N below, it will eventually reach 1. 

- if N is odd, give 3N + 1

- if N is even, give N/2

Put the new given value into N and loop

Now that I have a claim: it will reach one eventually, I suppose I can use Toulmin's model to help. Then I created the box below:

I have support from computations to see that the rule applies for each and every positive integer from 1 up to 5.764x10¹⁸ (Wikipedia). Seeing that it still holds up to an integer so large, I would claim that the rule holds for all positive integers. There is when I fall into the trap of this model: scientific research requires a high degree of accuracy and you never know that the number after the last one you tested will break the rule or not until you test it. But then numbers are infinite, so you cannot test all numbers. When I try to support my claim, I have to also be aware of accuracy requirements and generalizations. While human arguments tend to have a reasonable tolerance to uncertainty, science does not. This is where the weakness of Toulmin's model is exposed. When trying to apply the Toulmin's model, especially when outside of its designed scope, we have to be very aware of the limitations and possible failures. 

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After all, this Toulmin's model is a good model in its originally designed scope: human arguments. Review what I have written in this passage, I am trying to convince a claim that this model cannot be used to find solutions and may fail if the subject is a scientific research requiring high degree of accuracy and generalization. Here is where I can use the Toulmin's model to analyze my arguments. 

Communication in Engineering

It is incontrovertible that communication is one of the most important qualities we have to possess as engineers. Not so long ago, we human take pride of being about to talk, to communicate with each other effectively. We thought it was unique to our civilization and culture. As scientific knowledge advances, we gradually discover that many other kinds of living organisms can communicate with each other, like dogs barking, dolphins using ultrasonic and ants using pheromones. It is an obvious evolutionary advantage to be able to communicate and work in group.

In this world, being able to communicate effectively gives us the evolutionary advantage: it increases our value and save us from being wiped out. Especially as engineers who work in teams and face the nature for different problems every day, being able to communicate effectively is an essential quality.

Communication serves two main purposes: 1) letting others know what you think and 2) getting to know what others think.

The first one is done by speaking, writing or presenting. Only by communicating what you have in your head to others you can have a slight chance of realizing your earth-shattering idea into reality; only by communicating you can give your orders to whoever is helping you to do the work; only by communicating you can make others know how your product is superior to the others. We all knew that since we were young: “As a baby, you quickly discover that crying will bring your beloved Mommy or Daddy scurrying into your nursery to rock you, feed you or even change your diaper. You begin to realize that the louder and more often you cry, the faster they will show up at your crib!” (The Importance of Effective Communication, effective-communicating.com)

The second one is trickier. Humans are evolved in a selfish world – we have to fight for ourselves to get our chance of survival. Nature made us compete for the limited resources we have. However, as our knowledge grows, we realized that we can cooperate with each other to create a win-win situation. But one thing we cannot get rid of is the lack of listening. We tend to persist on what we think and what we are up to, but forget about the others. In the extreme way, we made the cooperating relationship into masters and slaves, thinking that we are the most important and the others are all subsidiary. But to become an effective communicator, we have to put down that sense of arrogance and listen to others. People will not choose to cooperate with you if it is solely for your good. It has to in some way benefit them also before they will cooperate with you. Sometimes what others want is very simple to you but when you miss it, you will never get along with them.

After we can share our thoughts with others and get to know what others think, we can build up more complex interactions such as negotiations, make compromises, convince others and collaborate in a team. All the complex interactions I mentioned are important qualities to be a successful engineer. You have to negotiate with materials providers and dealers to provide you with the required things, compromise to come to a consensus among co-workers, convince the decision-makers to fund your idea and collaborate in a team to realize your idea.

I have gone very lengthy about the importance of communication, and most of you should know that very well. And there are a few things to note when you are communicating with others.

1.      Do not think about what you should do when communicating with people. When communicating, it is best to be natural and stay focused on the topic you are discussing about. Focusing too much on the communication skills will make you look unnatural.

2.      Be clear. You have to be clear about what you are saying and the point you want to convey, or else you are defeating the entire purpose of communication – making others know what you think.

3.      Listen. I stressed the importance of listening in the above passage, and it is really important.

4.      Be aware of your pace. Make sure that you don’t speak too fast or too slow and that who you are addressing to is keeping up.

5.      Be confident of yourself. If you want to convince someone, you have to look convinced yourself. Even if it is just communicating, sounding confident will make people trust you more.

6.      Think from the listeners. You should think from the perspective of the listeners. Are you being clear enough and following a logical order? Are you listening to what they say? Do you sound convincing?

I am sure there are many more ways to improve your communication skills and that there is no lack of books/readings about this topic on the market. Now having known the importance and some tips in effective communication in engineering, we have just become better engineers. 

Building a network

Building a network is hard for me, for a person who likes to think more than speak. 

Anyway, I did socialize with someone. And that someone is my Math TA. His name is Stephen Longfield, the TA of my Math 220 (that's calculus 1) discussion section. Stephen normally talks with a soft voice and sound unconvincing, maybe that's what made me easy to approach him. 

But to talk about our communication, I have to start a bit earlier. It was the Friday before, when my CS 125 instructor, Lawrence Angrave, gave us a handout with a few problems. All the problems are very easy, except for one. The problem is a problem about computability. 

For those who are interested, the question is like this: 

Given a positive integer N, if N is odd, then multiply N by 3 and then add one. i.e., 3N+1. If N is even, halve N. Take the resulting number and repeat the process, and you will eventually reach 1. 

The question is are there any number that will not reach one? If no, how do you prove it?

Lawrence did not talk about this problem in depth, as I am sure it will take a long time if he chose to do so. Anyway, I took the problem home, and try to solve it. (I know no one has solved it before, but just try) And then I tried using different methods and come up with a few equations about the problem. However, I was stuck in one step. 

So I emailed Stephen to ask him about the problem (the problem that I am stuck with, not the question stated above), considering that he is a Math student. He gave me a very positive reply and very knowledgeable answer. Though I still have not solved the problem, his answer really helped me a lot. We got a few emails back and forth and talked about the problems. I also gave him some opinions on the classes he conduct. His classes are great in content and he has great notes, but he spoke with a lock of confidence. Through these contacts with my TA, I not only learned a lot academic knowledge from him but also knew more about him as a person. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to chat with him before or after the discussion section yet as I have classes both in the hour before and after the section. I will find a chance to chat with him and find out more about him soon.