Human Computation (Slides)

The word computer was originally used (circa 1900's) to describe a person whose job it was to compute.

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~jshaw/pick.html

"Pickerings Harem" was a group of women computer's who translated astronomical data recorded on photographic films into tables of data in standardized units.

Human Counting Machine

Decimal

We are used to writing and thinking of numbers using a system of Arabic numerals, a technology that originated in Persian mathematics in the 1st and 2nd century. In this system, 10 discrete symbols (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used to express an infinite number of concepts of quantities.

An important step is to (re) make the separation between the notion of a particular quantity (say the number of days in the month of February, or twenty-eight) and the numeric notation of that concept ("28"). "28" is simply one way of expressing this concept. In Roman numerals, the same concept could be expresses as "XXVIII".

Rules (Decimal):
1. When tapped on your shoulder, count.
2. When you get to 10, tap the shoulder of the person next to you and "zero" your count.

Exhibit 1: Human computers Lieven, Amy, and Natasa count the number of people in the room.

File:HumanCountingMachine decimal.ogv

Result:
8, 1
...
(reversing order)
18
...
Decoding:
10's  1's
1     8

18 = decimal representation of "eighteen"

Binary

Binary, a system of expressing numbers using only two discrete symbols (typically: 1, and 0), is the system used by modern digital computers for simple numeric quantities. It was Claude Shannon who made the connection between George Boole's work on logical systems based on true and false values and using electronic circuits to implement them as circuitry. Using a binary system makes a physical implementation much simpler than a decimal system such as Charles Babbage's Difference Engine.

Rules (Binary):
1. When tapped on your shoulder, raise your hand.
2. When you get tapped and your hand is raised, tap the shoulder of the person next to you put your hand down.

Exhibit 2: Human computers Lieven, Amy, Natasa, Inge, Danny, and Fabien count the number of people in the room, in binary.

File:HumanCountingMachine binary.ogv

Result:
0, 1, 0, 0, 1
...
(reversing order)
1  0  0  1  0
...
Decoding:
16's 8's 4's 2's 1's
1    0   0   1   0

10010 = binary representation of "eighteen"