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GuySrinivasan comments on Open Thread, Apr. 27 - May 3, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 27 April 2015 12:18AM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 27 April 2015 05:51:15PM *  1 point [-]

Additionally, I'm a little worried about the control group part. I expect it's relatively easy to recruit people to play a game and have them be motivated to play it, but if I tell people that "oh, but you may be randomly assigned to the control condition where you're given more traditional math instruction instead", I expect that that will drop participation. And even the people who do show up regardless may not be particularly motivated to actually work on the problems if they do get assigned to the control condition, especially given that I'm hoping to also educate people who'd usually avoid maths. How insane would it be to just not have a control group?

Comment author: GuySrinivasan 27 April 2015 06:17:21PM 3 points [-]

Do you have access to units of caring?

Are you trying to gain knowledge, get a piece of paper, both, one as a side effect of another?

"actually graduate" versus "see if they learn anything" might hugely inform your process. Off-the-cuff I'm guessing you want to actually graduate first with hopes of nice learning side effects, then see if they learn anything via something that takes longer.

Also a consideration: 3+ arms. Instruction game, instruction non-game, and non-instruction game. Also possibly non-instruction non-game.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 27 April 2015 06:36:14PM 1 point [-]

Do you have access to units of caring?

To some limited extent.

Off-the-cuff I'm guessing you want to actually graduate first with hopes of nice learning side effects, then see if they learn anything via something that takes longer.

Correct.