lab 2.04 hint considered harmful

[jdonwells]

I don't think this is going to work for most students.

The food quiz program uses what looks like a single level neural net. I like that idea even though it isn't presented as such.

The problem is with the hint. "Hint: Use a search engine to look up an efficient way to find the largest number in a Python list." If you actually do that you will find loops and sorting. They don't know how to use loops and using the sort function won't work because the food names and ratings are in different lists. That takes it to another level.

Looking at the given example code we see the use of for loops to solve a different though similar problem.

The way to solve this with what they currently know is to create a long if elif... else statement that looks for the maximum votes. We can do that with a fixed 6 choices. So 5 comparisons will always work. No loop needed, just a bad habit that we reinforce with the Zork project. (But that is a different issue.)

So get rid of the hint. Most students will be confused and waste time looking for a solution that isn't there.

[jdonwells]

I have been looking at the 2.04 lab and have come to the conclusion that it is underutilized. With a small rebranding, it could be called an expert system and a brief introduction to Artificial Intelligence.

"It is the future and waiters have been replaced by robots. But people still come into restaurants not knowing what to eat. The robots don't know what to advise. So your job is to create an expert system that uses your knowledge of breakfast foods to advise people what to choose. You will create a single-layer neural network. You will ask questions and propagate the answer through your neural net to come up with the best choice."

Talk a bit about how neural networks work, expert systems, and AI. Bob is your uncle, they have a project they can do with what they know that makes sense and seems bigger than it really is. Make that the Unit 2 project and move Zork to when they know enough to actually do it well.