Thursday, April 17th, 2014

 1.  Polya handout:  Figure 11.1 has nine different terms that are
                     related to problem solving and programming.

         Fig. 11.1 How we think.

         i. Four corners:   Isolation and Combination
                            Mobilization and Organization

                            Isolate, Combine, Mobilize, Organize

        ii. Four sides:     Recognize, Regroup, Remember, Supplement

       iii. One center:     Prevision

     Decide which Ghostbuster you would think is most closely associated
        with each of the 9 terms.  Deciding may be just an educated 
        guess, but try to guess and justify your choice.

     Dr. Peter Venkman   or   Dr. Raymond Stantz   or   Dr. Egon Spengler

     Reread  http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/ghost.txt

        and  http://www.cs.uni.edu/~jacobson/waggle.txt

             to review the ideas and the steps of problem solving and
             what each character symbolizes and/or says or does in the 
             movie.

 2.  Coaching the Artist Within handout

     Carefully read that handout.  Relate it to the ghost.txt reading
     that we have done and the waggle.txt reading we have done.
     Present some insights and thoughts and confusions about how
     it relates to Ghostbusters.

     What is the three-step procedure in the Coaching handout?

     How does it relate to the scene in Ghostbusters where Scott gets
         upset with Venkman for giving him all those shocks?

     How does it relate to the quote by Dr. Peter Venkman:

         "I'm studying the effects of negative reinforcement 
                                                 on ESP ability."

     How is the "wrong thinking" related to the
                           scene where Venkman is shocking Scott?

     "It appears as self-battering and self-bashing."

     Iceberg, Polya quote and discussion in the /~jacobson/ghost.txt,
     Venkman shocking Scott as a study of negative reinforcement,
     90% of problem solving, attitude, ESP ability symbolizing
     general problem solving or learning or programming ability.

 3.  GOAL-DIRECTED LEARNING handout:

     i. Redraw the diagram for GOAL-DIRECTED LEARNING, Figure 8.1.
        Redraw it large so you have room to add some comments to
        it and annotate it when you do ii. next here.

    ii. Relate the diagram to the 3 steps of the programming and
        problem solving process.  Discuss how it is related.
        Feel free to use any nice phrases or quote the top part
        of the handout (which is from Polya's book How To Solve It).

                 a. Understand it.  Focus on the WHAT of the problem.
                    Dr. Peter Venkman

                     i. What is the given, the input?
                    ii. What is the goal, the desired result, the output?

                 b. Develop a PLAN for HOW to solve it.  An algorithm.
                    Dr. Raymond Stantz

                    The PLAN focuses on HOW to get 
                                    from  i. (input data or given facts) 
                                      to ii. (output results or unknown 
                                                      answer or the goal)

                        with a step by step series of actions.

                 c. Code it.  
                    Dr. Egon Spengler
                              Translate the PLAN, 
                                        the pseudocode algorithm
                                        and flowchart into C++,
                                        or Visual Basic, or Photoshop,
                                        or Flash and Actionscript 3.0,
                                        or Access, or Excel, or C, or
                                        PHP, etc.