ZAMM chapters 16 and 17
General comments about Bill Becker:
- He’s an artist with an interest in technology
- Important messages:
Select materials for a project with their properties in mind
Top spokes: tension in the spokes. As the wheel is turning, the tension is changing. Not all of the spokes work towards supporting the rider
Break with front wheel. Front wheel is more important for breaking than back wheel.
No acceleration in the front wheel, only in the back
Suspension system: whole purpose is to give a more comfortable ride. Absorbs shock from a bump
- He didn’t talk about how it keeps the wheels on the ground
- Front fork is very important (go izzy and alex)
- Keeps motorcycle on the ground when it hits bumps
Chapter 16:
No motorcycle references
Content:
- Narrator talks about what would happen if schools took away grades
- What would happen if students didn’t have grading system
- Kid drops out of school and then comes back and works in machine shop and starts making tools
- He decides grades aren’t important
- Parker thinks it was deceiving that he was masking the grades rather than taking them away
- Grades are so engrained in society
- Can’t just cover up grades, have to find a way to get rid of them all together
- Hiding grades would take away the room for improvement
- Preston: has his grades hidden from him. Asked all his professors to give him feedback, but he doesn’t ever ask for grade
- Doesn’t want to know his GPA
- Hudson didn’t have grades all through high school
- Every semester he would get a page write up from teachers. Transcript was all write ups from teachers
- You would need more admission officers to go through all of that
- Idea of quality:
- Integral to the world
- So elusive that it can’t be pinned down
- Do we try to replace the idea of quality with a grade?
- Hudson thinks mankind tries to quantify everything
- Professor Littman: ranks papers quality top to bottom
- Very subjective
- Is the job your doing good enough?
- Professor Littman is not a fan of grades
- PDF system doesn’t work because students take courses that they don’t care about the course in order to lighten the load
- Troublesome with classes where there is teamwork
- Feedback element is very important
- Schools teach to imitate:
- Professors are very dogmatic
- Teaching to a test, so teachers a lot of the time don’t have a choice
- Picasso studied many different artists and tried to imitate all the different styles and then brought his creativity into it. This served as a foundation for him
- Success of this course is about being able to do things on your own
- Idea of individuals developing skills that they can then apply later on in life
- Individuals can set objectives for themselves
- Overwhelmed with workload: objective becomes trying to move on to something else
Chapter 17:
No motorcycle references
YMCA method of using kids egos to elicit effort
Ego goals provide good motivation. Any effort that has self something as its end goal is a disaster
Its bad for ego to be its own reward
Ali thinks people have to recognize their success. People shouldn’t always be looking ahead, they should be aware and satisfied with here and now
Micah doesn’t think it is possible to not look ahead to the future
Diego: you should focus on what you want, rather than the act of achieving a goal over and over again
Hudson : is ambition good?
Narrator says to focus on the journey of getting there and achieving your goal, rather than only focusing on the goal
Uses metaphor of trying to reach the top of a mountain
Diego: shouldn’t be focused on continuously achieving
The point of the chapter is to get the definition of quality