Human Computation

[theotherguy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtFroEJN1nI&feature=related

I know that this is really old, but I just learned that this guy will be one of my professors next year. His class, "Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science" is apparently very fun, but also one of the hardest classes I will ever have to take. Its supposedly the "weed out class" at CMU.

I really like this guy's idea, but his ESP game hasn't really taken off.

 

[Krynn72]

I stopped watching at 1:20 because he is so uncomfortable looking.

 

[mindless_moder]

damn you , i need to sleep.
also :http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

 

[bbson john]

So this idea actually adopted and worked?

 

[Pesmerga]

The ESP and Peekaboom games are real and you can play them, but I do not think they effect actual searches on Google. Currently, searches on Google are pretty much based on popularity and word relevance.

 

[bbson john]

also :http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

This. It is applied to google.

 

[JFry]

That guy is brilliant! It will be interesting to see how this sort of thinking develops and what we can accomplish. He seems to have some extremely bad nervous habits or ticks or something. I wonder if he's always like that or if it was just because he was giving a speech.

 

[theotherguy]

Holy mother of god.

We had our first class today, and its basically just the introductory stuff, but I can tell right now that this class will destroy me.

Statistics collected by Von Ahn
Fastest time to complete homework: 30 hours.

Time it took the TAs to complete the first homework: 16 hours.

Average time of homework: 42 hours.

Amount of grade dedicated to homework: 45%

Grades you can receive on homework: 0,50, or 100

Number of homeworks: 1 per week

percent of students who got an F: 10%

percent of students who failed (D or lower): 20%

percent of students who dropped: 5%

percent of students who got an A: 25%

(in Von Ahns words) percent of students who got an A without killing themselves: 0%

Some notable quotes from previous students (collected from surveys)

"Sadistic."

"Von Ahn should be sued for psychological abuse."

"Von Ahn told us that he would kick our asses and that we would enjoy it, and he did. And we did."

"Von Ahn is offensive."

"The homework can only be described as 'soul-sucking'."

"Von Ahn > Chuck Norris"

-----

Gentlemen, I am screwed.

 

[McGooTheWise]

That you are. Good luck. :l

 

[2Fast4U]

Holy mother of god.

We had our first class today, and its basically just the introductory stuff, but I can tell right now that this class will destroy me.

Statistics collected by Von Ahn
Snip

Some notable quotes from previous students (collected from surveys)
Snip

-----

Gentlemen, I am screwed.

This made me lol hard Good luck, I'm sure it will not be all that bad when you get used to it.

 

[TimoJay]

Don't worry. I really doubt a class you can take your first year of college will be more intensive than classes you will take your Junior/Senior(/Fifth) year.

edit: nvm, now that I think about it... I doubt it'll be as advanced, but it sure can be more intensive/brutal. At least you are getting it out of the way early... After all, it'd suck to go to college for three years only to be cut down by a "weed out" class.

 

[theotherguy]

Don't worry. I really doubt a class you can take your first year of college will be more intensive than classes you will take your Junior/Senior(/Fifth) year.

edit: nvm, now that I think about it... I doubt it'll be as advanced, but it sure can be more intensive/brutal. At least you are getting it out of the way early... After all, it'd suck to go to college for three years only to be cut down by a "weed out" class.

We've started with the first homework assignment, and I've estimated we've worked about 12 hours already.

The team that gets the final solution first all win Ipod nanos.

One team finished at 5 AM this morning, after working without pause since 8 PM last night. I have no idea how they did this.

The homework is very difficult, but its much more fun than I ever expected it to be. It's sort of like being on a game show. As soon as you solve one problem, you get the way to get to the next problem, which will give you the answer to some secret code, which brings you somewhere else, etc.


The first part of the problem was:

h is the first, fifth, sixteenth, ... letter in this sentence, not counting spaces, dashes or commas. (The word "and" is never used.)

The sequence therefore is 1, 5, 16, 25, 36...

Now let X be the 15,251st prime in this sequence. Go to X.com.

We found this using a brute-force program that simply generated the first primes up to 10 million, and then found each number in the sequence, checking to see if it was prime, then outputted the 15,251st prime in the sequence.

After going to X.com, though, things got a lot more complicated and ridiculously complex. For instance, one of the answers to one of the problems ended up being a telephone number that, when called, told us to go to a secret location to find a baffling code, which could then be used to solve another problem. Another problem involved simulating 4,096 cars on a 15,251 kilometer long highway (the course number is 15251 btw). Another problem involved cracking a cipher using a key found in another one of the problems. I don't know how far this will go, but I know we have at least several more hours of work to do.