Computers learn in a few different ways, and this week you get to try FOUR of them: sorting things into groups, finding groups all by themselves, drawing a guessing line, and asking yes/no questions. Grown-ups: these have fancy names, check your Learn-Along box below!
These Caribbean animals are all mixed up! When you sort things into groups, you are doing what AI does every day.
You sorted the animals because you KNEW where they live. But guess what: a computer can find groups even when nobody tells it the answer!
Miss Pat planted callaloo in her garden in Clarendon. Plants that got more sun grew taller. The computer can draw a special line through the dots, and then use the line to GUESS how tall a new plant will grow!
Some computers make choices by asking yes/no questions, one after the other, like a little quiz. Answer the questions about YOUR morning and the computer will tell you what to bring outside!
The one idea this week: your child just met four real machine-learning methods in kid form. The animal sorting is classification. The computer finding groups by itself is k-means clustering (unsupervised learning: no labels given). The guessing line is linear regression. The yes/no game is a decision tree. These same four power spam filters, customer groupings, price predictions, and medical checklists.
1. Sorting champion (Tuesday). 🧦 Help sort the laundry or the cutlery drawer. Count how fast you can sort into groups. You just did classification!
2. Trick the grown-up (Thursday). 🦀 Ask your family: "Does a crab live in the sea or on land?" See if you can find 2 more tricky animals. Tricky examples make AI smarter.
3. Flood game practice (weekend). 🌊 Play the Flood Prediction game again with a grown-up and try to make your flood AI even better.
Play the Flood Prediction game →