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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 14th, 2023

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  • I have a friend who works for a car dealership. One of the old farts in charge got suckered into buying an AI phone receptionist service. The thing never connects people to the right department even when asking specifically by name. A car dealership cannot afford to have customers getting turned away by a poorly functioning ai phone service.

    Ai has become the newest excuse for borderline conmen to sell expensive services to administration that doesn’t know to carefully check claims before buying something.





  • The speed of sound in seawater is around 1500m/s or 5400 km/hr. Something tells me they won’t actually be going supersonic.

    The article shouldn’t be referencing the speed of sound without specifying the medium for the sound waves and conditions such as temperature for water or temperature and pressure for air.

    Also, the supercavitation would be incredibly noisy underwater, and at those speeds the vessel itself would produce a very loud pressure wave that would be easy to detect. So its advantage wouldn’t be in avoiding detection, it would be in moving fast enough that detection doesn’t matter because no torpedo could intercept them.





  • Don’t overthink it. Look up faculty and try to find one that teaches introductory courses. Send them an email stating something along the lines that you’re a non student looking to learn a little more than high school introductory terms. Ask if there’s a lecture you could audit or a time like office hours where you could ask questions. A bunch of professors would probably be willing to talk to a flat earther if they were approached on a polite and courteous manner.

    If your interest can’t be satisfied with a question session, you could look into whether a local university has an option for non-degree students to enroll in classes. That’s an option that’s frequently not advertised but is pretty common (at least in the US.)



  • Hold an in class quiz with essentially the same problem but with different values. The students that actually worked through the problem should be able to do it again with the changes. Those who didn’t understand and just put down what their peers got will struggle with a quiz. Bonus points if you can restructure the problem in a way to elucidate which specific aspects you think the students were skipping over with help from their peers. Feel free to have specific requirements assigned point values in the problem statement.

    Don’t call them into your office and put them on the spot. That will make this adversarial. Your job is to teach them how to solve problems and communicate their methods in a clear fashion. You should reevaluate your problem writing and grading policies if just looking up answers can earn a passing grade. If you give a quiz, be up front with them that you have concerns about some students skipping the work and copying answers. Reiterate that the point of the exam was to make sure they can solve problems, the correct answer is merely a byproduct.

    I will add speculation that there is a difference between what your students think you expect from an answer and what your expectations actually are. Mismatches in expectations are immensely frustrating for both parties. So don’t leave your students guessing. Give them specific examples of work of different quality and what aspects earn full points and what things might lead to point deductions. Some of the best professors I had would publish all the prior year exams with their solutions. That gave everyone the opportunity to mimic the workflow and match the level of detail expected. That also elliminates the concern of students finding the answers online or from prior year students for exams as the teacher will have had to avoid reused questions entirely.