Inventiveness

Harry Potter’s potion-making ability soars when he follows alternate instructions scribbled in his Advanced Potion Making textbook (pic from the fandom wiki). The textbook’s previous owner remains mysterious through most of the namesake Half-Blood Prince, but is revealed at the end as none other than Severus Snape. Meanwhile in class, Hermione is miffed by the inferior results of her doggedly following the official instructions – the equivalent of the lab manual in chemistry courses. How did Snape improve on the lab manual? He must have been quite the talented student to try things out for himself to yield better results. Perhaps that’s why he is a potions master.

But Snape was going a lot further in his magical education. He was inventing new spells! Several are mentioned by name including muffliato, levicorpus, and sectumsempra; they range from useful-harmless, to amusing, to downright life-threatening. Hermione may have been right to beware of trying something out without knowing what it does, as Harry learns the hard way to his chagrin. How does one invent a new spell anyway? I’m sure it has to be much more than combining some well-chosen Latin phrases and flicking or swishing your wand with the appropriate hand movements. Otherwise I’d expect lots more folks doing it.

At Hogwarts, Harry does not invent any new spells – in fact he’s an average student academically. Hermione is excellent academically, but called “narrow-minded” by Luna’s father; perhaps this blinkers her from creative invention. In contrast, we learn in Deathly Hallows that the young Dumbledore was both academically brilliant and creative – probing the cutting edge of magical knowledge as he corresponded with the top magical users of the day, and was celebrated in the leading magic-academic journals. And the main antagonist of the series, Voldemort (“flight of death”), went further than most in developing the Dark Arts – inventing new spells and magic.

Part of what makes books 6 and 7 in the series engaging is broadening the focus away from the three young protagonists (Harry, Ron, Hermione) to flashbacks and memories of three powerful inventive wizards (Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape). The latter three encounter challenges, tragedy, and loneliness in early life. Could this be a source of their creativity? Witness the many homages to Steve Jobs. Or does creativity require a hint of madness, as hinted by the Greeks? Or perhaps an appropriate balance of stimulation and rest? What are the conditions that foster genius?

Today’s higher education punditry is awash with “innovation” and teaching for creativity. Can it be taught? Must it be caught? Is it innate? Or is it fostered with a growth mindset? We’re all worried about robots taking away our jobs. Perhaps creativity is the last bastion that A.I. will not conquer as it machine-learningly grinds its way to some solution. The flash of insight, the novel imagination – are these human-only traits? Listen to the clarion calls for creatively overhauling our education systems. Sounds good – until you wade into the weeds. How exactly do you teach for creativity? Having delved through the literature, and wearing my scientist-hat, I can say that the whole business remains murky. I contrast this to the pundits wearing their wizard-hats touting their magical solutions.

One significant challenge in being inventive is that coming with something both novel and useful requires having a fair amount of area-knowledge. Genius solutions don’t spawn from the ignorant novice, especially if you’re looking for something that is useful to a significant degree. You don’t need a fancy academic degree to be creative, but you need to know enough stuff, or have a prepared mind so to speak. And as a field progresses in depth of knowledge, the breakthroughs can only come when you have enough basic (and possibly detailed) knowledge. But you have to hold that knowledge lightly. It should not be a stricture that you doggedly follow, but a launch-pad that widens your horizons.

I’ll be honest. I don’t think I’ve come up with anything of genius in my research. There have been some innovative things, clever little bits, that one might even call creative solutions. There is some novelty and some usefulness in some of the papers I’ve published, but these swirl in an ecosystem of related ideas already out there. Maybe my training has made me blinkered, although I don’t think so. People have called some of my teaching ideas creative, but what seems novel to someone else is something I’d been working on for a while – and I read a lot in the area. I’ve come up with creative projects for students in class, tinkering at the edges of fostering creativity, but enlightenment remains elusive as I muck in the mirk. (This blog is my creative outlet!)

Oddly enough, I’m not bothered by all this uncertainty. Maybe it’s age, and that my perspective of life changes as I look through a rearview mirror that increasingly captures more of my years. I look forward to trying a few new things in my classes. Small changes that I can build on. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m too cautious. Maybe I’m not driven or ambitious enough. Maybe I’m more Hufflepuff than Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, or Slytherin. Or maybe I’m just not willing to work hard enough at it.

Dumbledore, Voldermort, Snape. Different generations. Maybe each generation has its one rare outstanding inventive magic-user. Who would this be in Harry’s generation? I’d like to suggest Neville Longbottom. We start to see hints of ability first in Herbology as he is encouraged and gains confidence. In Deathly Hallows, Seamus remarks that Neville truly “gets” the Room of Requirement. And although we are not told why or how, Neville eventually becomes a Hogwarts professor. I suspect there was both talent and inventiveness combined with knowledge. It’s a reminder to me as a teacher to encourage my students. It’s a reminder to me as a sort-of-student to continue persevering in my own learning. I can still be inventive!

P.S. Thus closes my re-reading of the Harry Potter books. My last five blog posts highlight my thoughts from the first five books – and I’ve mostly focused on education!

Forming Study Groups

A ringleader is needed for an act of rebellion. Book-smart don’t-get-into-trouble Hermione would not be your first guess for ringleader. But when Dolores Umbridge “teaches” the students defensive magical theory by having them just read the textbook in class*, Hermione gets rebellious in Order of the Phoenix.

First, she questions the lack of practical skills in class by skillfully disagreeing with the course aims and the theory. Umbridge shuts her down by questioning if she is a credentialed education expert. Whether or not Umbridge is a credentialed education expert is not discussed – previous Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers likely were not. Quirrell, Lockhart, Lupin, Moody.

Then Hermione organizes an outside-of-class study group – the D.A., Dumbledore’s Army.

Two reasons are mentioned for this act of rebellion. Hermione provides compelling motivation for arming yourself (and being able to disarm your opponent) in dangerous times. A fellow student also points out that Hermione wants to be prepared for the upcoming O.W.L. exams that have a practical component. Both are motivating factors: Do well in your exams AND learn skills preparing you for the outside world. If your instructor and coursework are not doing it for you, go do it yourself – with friends! Hermione could have just formed a study group with Harry and Ron, but she decides that inviting others “for the greater good” is valuable. Dangerous times.

I’ve previously discussed the formation of study groups in preparation for exams. To provide some direction, I asked students to submit mock exam questions before each exam. I explained to the students why this was a useful exercise, and how to get the most out of it. I’m not sure if I was sufficiently motivating in my exhortations – a few students took this exercise seriously, but the majority turned in perfunctory work. Maybe they didn’t see the need. After all, I don’t teach like Umbridge and I think the students sense that I care about their education. But what if I was a worse or absent teacher?

As a student I’ve experienced having teachers who did not know the subject material, and in several cases, no teacher at all. When you’re in a school facing teacher, classroom, and equipment shortages, let’s just say that the situation is far from ideal. If not for the external exams, equivalent to O.W.L.s, I would likely have done nothing – school was a fun social experience with many “free periods”. But as exam-time loomed, we the students organically formed study groups. The purpose and strategy was clear. If you can predict the sorts of things you would be asked on an external exam, you could focus your studying on how to answer these questions and do well. This involves coming up with mock exam questions. Alone, this is challenging. It’s much more efficient to divide and conquer – with friends!

If I was a terrible teacher, would students get together and study effectively on their own? Likely some would and others would not. Besides the D.A., it’s unclear if any other study groups formed – less likely with the introduction of Educational Decree #24. We don’t have the data to compare the Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. results in Harry and Hermione’s cohort versus other years, when the teaching was not as patchy. Well, some combination of Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic likely has the data, but that’s a subject for a different post. But returning to the topic at hand, I’ve considered being more confusing and opaque in class so that students don’t deceive themselves into thinking they understand what I’ve said. I’ve never actually tried it, oh well. I do tell students over-and-over how to not-deceive-themselves when taking practice exams. (They need to do it “under exam conditions”; few of them do judging by my office hours.)

Perhaps I need to have a stronger hand in the forming of study groups. I’ve formally organized the students into groups for class projects, but have preferred study groups to form organically without my interference. But I’m not sure the present generation of students knows how to do this effectively. I’ve noticed that being in a residential liberal arts college helps (as opposed to a commuter school), but there seem to be larger invisible barriers between students these days compared to when I was a student, or before the rise of cellphones. There is “student success” research suggesting that interventions involving forming effective study groups improves student performance. But I still think students should take the initiative and do this on their own organically without my intervention.

Maybe a Hermione-type student is needed for this to happen. I was not a ringleader in my study groups. But there might be more ways that (as an instructor) I can nudge the students towards forming effective study groups. Something to think about and bounce around with my colleagues.

*Reading the textbook in class is a bad use of class time, but if students never read it outside of class…

P.S. For my previous Order of the Phoenix re-reading, see Educational Decree #23.

Ranking Students

How does the Goblet of Fire determine who should be Champion?

A quick recap: The Triwizard Tournament pits the “top” student from each of three magical schools (Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, Durmstrang) in a series of strenuous practical tasks. Besides magical talent, a competitor has to display courage, ingenuity, and the ability to think on one’s feet. Fame and prize money would certainly attract the ambitious. And in the spirit of sports rivalry, each school would want to put up its strongest contestant as representative: its Champion.

Essentially this is a ranking task. How do you decide on the best student? As a professor, I encounter these situations regularly when selecting students for awards, fellowships, and scholarships. There is always a list of criteria to “judge” the students: GPA, research performance and productivity, service, highest score on the final exam, best poster (using a pre-determined rubric perhaps), most consistent, best improvement, etc. Sometimes there’s a clear front-runner, but often several students seem equally worthy and a tough “choice” needs to be made. Politics, favoritism, first impressions, last impressions, social skills, and much more, can factor into the final decision – usually made by committee, since alone I might be highly biased.

The Goblet of Fire is supposedly an “impartial judge” that selects the Champion amongst all worthy entrants from each school. The procedure: Entrants must write their name and school on a piece of parchment and deposit it into the fiery cup. They have twenty-four hours to do this, at which point the goblet spits out the worthy Champion’s name. Is the Goblet of Fire like the Sorting Hat? How does it figure out which characteristics are most important and rank the candidates appropriately?

Let’s start with the easier case that doesn’t require close ranking: the job of the Sorting Hat. I’ve briefly discussed this in a recent post; the Hogwarts founders put some of their “brains” into the hat so that it would pick out characteristics prized most by each of its founders. This is summarized in part of the Sorting Hat’s song in Goblet of Fire.

By Gryffindor, the bravest were

Prized far beyond the rest;

For Ravenclaw, the cleverest

Would always be the best;

For Hufflepuff, hard workers were

Most worthy of admission;

And power-hungry Slytherin

Loved those of great ambition.

Courage, Cleverness, Diligence, Ambition. These are all important qualities for a Hogwarts champion facing dangerous magical tasks. But the Sorting Hat has an easier task: it might “see” all these qualities, although it just has to figure out which is dominant. Our Muggle world has multiple equivalents on our magical Internet. Answer ten quiz questions that supposedly suss out your personal traits and you will then know which Hogwarts house suits you best. Won’t take more than a minute! And we so much of our personal data out in the cloud exacerbated by social media sharing, an appropriate bot could mop up the data, and spit out your assignment without needing the quiz.

One trend in higher education is the integration of student data, supposedly for better targeted intervention if a student seems to be veering off course. On the back end, one integrates data streams coming in from the Learning Management System, the Student Affairs database, test scores, Admissions files, student e-Portfolio, and combine this with bots that sweep up data from the wider world web. Now awash in data, an appropriate artificial intelligence (A.I.) program could rank the students, once again based on comparison to criteria of seemingly “successful” people who form the machine-learning training set. Bots are already reading resumes as part of the hiring process. That’s sort of what the Goblet of Fire is doing – if we imagine a “fair” process from a supposedly impartial judge.

But where does the Goblet get its data? Presumably each school has records on its students. Certainly the Ministry of Magic knows the identity of each Hogwarts students, where they are, and whether they might have performed magic in front of a Muggle. If individual memories in all their 3D-high-definition can be stored and viewed later, there should be no problem storing less memory-intensive records magically or not. Argus Filch, who cannot perform magic, stores student records old-school, or I should say non-magic-school. Or it might mop up data from the magical airwaves. Once the Goblet has the data, it could cross-reference if a student was under-aged, or did poorly in classes, or had a disciplinary record, and potentially access instructor records noting exemplary performance by students.

The Goblet can also be hoodwinked. Tricked. Confunded. Bamboozled. So can machine-learning algorithms. There are clever, creative ways to add “noise” to an image file to completely fool an A.I. – there’s a whole industry of research in this area. Harry Potter’s name came out of the goblet even though it shouldn’t have. The Goblet also spits out names very shortly, or almost immediately, after self-nominations close. It must work very quickly to come up with the names of the Champions. Perhaps it can do this through handwriting analysis, and not bother about pre-loaded data. After all, that’s all that the students submit – handwritten parchment. Can’t rule out the possibility, I suppose, as far-fetched as it sounds.

Somehow the Sorting Hat and the Goblet use some sort of proxy to make their selections. How good is the proxy at sorting or ranking students? I don’t know. Certainly those in Gryffindor seem to display bravery, but so do others from other houses. And the company one keeps influences how one behaves or chooses. Whenever I assess my students, I always use a proxy of some sort since I can’t magically look into a student’s head to see what they’ve learned. I should be similarly wary when a tech-company offers an A.I. claiming to do the same.

For that matter, why are we ranking students anyway? 

P.S. My previous take on Goblet of Fire? Comparing Bagman and Crouch.

Holiday Homework

Prisoner of Azkaban remains my favourite book in the Harry Potter series. There are so many interesting things going on, but today I want to highlight one mundane (perhaps dreary) topic: Holiday Homework. It comes up briefly at the beginning of Chamber of Secrets, but gets more page time in Prisoner of Azkaban. Going into Year 3, Harry is able to complete his holiday homework thanks to arriving several weeks early to stay at the Leaky Cauldron. Hermione likely goes above and beyond her holiday homework. There is no mention of whether Ron does his.

What is holiday homework at Hogwarts? Over the long summer break, it seems that Hogwarts teachers assign essays, reading and possibly some practical work. Why? As a teacher, I think it’s to help students keep up with learning. It’s amazing how much chemistry students “forget” over the summer, unless they are doing research. Even the month-long winter break reveals substantial forgetting. This is problematic because the second semester sequences of G-Chem, O-Chem, and Biochem substantially rely on solidly knowing content from the semester. (P-Chem has overlap between the two semesters but is largely separable into two parts.)

One problem stems from the modular approach of U.S. higher education, increasingly aped throughout the world. There are advantages of having a modular system, but one of the disadvantages is discontinuity from one semester to another, one year to another. Students switch sections, and have different instructors with varying emphases even if the content remains largely the same. Students may not necessarily progress as a cohort as they rearrange their schedules. This is unlike the rigid cohort “old-school” system that previously existed (but is now changing) in many other parts of the world.

Hogwarts, modeled after the U.K. school system, follows a cohort model where students take the same core classes from year-to-year (with some modification going into Years 3 and 6). There is an “external” exam at the end of Year 5 (O.W.L.s, equivalent to O-Levels) and Year 7 (N.E.W.T.s equivalent to A-Levels). In yesteryear there was an additional external exam at the end of Year 3 in secondary school (the Lower Cambridge Examinations). I went through a similarly rigid system in secondary school before discovering the freedom of the modular system in the U.S. at the college level. Pre-university, all my studying was geared towards preparing for these external exams.

Being a small school, Hogwarts has few teachers and a small student body. Thus, a teacher follows each cohort from year to year as they progress in a subject. For example, if you took Transfiguration every year, you’d have McGonagall. For Potions, you’d have Snape, or at least Harry’s cohort did the first five years. Then Snape moved over to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Slughorn was coaxed out of retirement to cover Potions. There’s a great advantage to continuity with the same instructor; conversely having different instructors with different styles can be disruptive – as was the case with Defense Against the Dark Arts during Harry’s time at Hogwarts.

Having a rigid cohort system and the same instructor from one year to the next allows for holiday homework. This provides continuity, not to mention smoother building on foundational work towards complex material. Chemistry education today remains rather hierarchical, for good reason. In some countries, chemistry at the university level follows a rigid cohort system; you progress from Year 1 Chemistry to Year 2 to Year 3. I don’t know if there’s holiday homework but there should be! From what I’ve heard, even though I did not experience this myself, there is holiday homework assigned at the secondary school level, certainly during breaks between terms and even between years for the A-Levels, which is run on a cohort system. What a great idea!

Could this be done in the U.S. modular system? I think so, at least at smaller schools. The small liberal arts college I attended had year-long G-Chem and O-Chem. There might have been holiday homework over winter break, but I no longer remember. At my present larger college, we run many sections of G-Chem and O-Chem staffed by many instructors. Some of my students in G-Chem 1 stay with me for G-Chem 2, but others do not; and in G-Chem 2, I get students who weren’t with me in G-Chem 1. Some might have taken G-Chem 1 more than one semester ago, or at a different institution. All this is to say that there is potentially much discontinuity.

In recent years, I have e-mailed my G-Chem 2 class a week before the semester begins, when I think my class roster is fairly stable, to let them know that there will be a quiz (covering Energy topics in G-Chem 1) on the first day of class. This serves several purposes. It emphasizes why G-Chem 1 is a pre-requisite for G-Chem 2. Yes, we will actually build on the previous material. It also helps me figure out where students are at since only a small portion may have been in my G-Chem 1 section the previous semester.

But I wonder whether it’s possible to assign more substantial and directed holiday homework; obviously I think this would be good for the students’ learning. However, besides the logistical issues of students switching sections all throughout the break into the first week of classes, it also creates further lack of uniformity unless I can convince all my fellow instructors to do something similar. Although we’re a sizable group, I’m in a highly collegial department where the G-Chem instructors meet very regularly throughout the semester and folks are willing to try new things! So I think this is worth a shot, if we can agree on a common holiday homework framework and to build in plans to motivate the students to complete the work.

Taking a leaf from Harry Potter, I also want to be fair to students for whom this might be difficult. When Harry returned to Privet Drive after Year 1, the Dursleys locked away all his school materials and he wasn’t able to complete his holiday homework. In the summer between Years 2 and 3, Harry had learned to pick the lock and do his homework in secret while the Dursleys were asleep. And after getting to the Leaky Cauldron, he could do it in the open – while getting help from others. He could even practice magic – something that would be challenging because of the ordinance preventing the use of magic in front of Muggles. Thus, depending on your family situation, your ability to do holiday homework may vary greatly. (Some of my students have to work full-time at a wage-earning job during the summer.)

It’s also good to have real breaks from work so one shouldn’t fill the time with holiday homework. Enough to keep up, but not so much that students don’t get enough of a break. Also, there’s having to grade holiday homework. Unless I resort to some form of self-grading.

In the meantime, Goblet of Fire is up next.

Second Choice: Slytherin's Heir

It’s been five years. I’m re-reading the Harry Potter series. What jumped out at me in Sorcerer’s Stone this time around was the anxiety of Harry’s first week. I speculated that his choice of Ron, rather than Draco, as his first friend was significant. In Harry’s first evening at Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat put him in Gryffindor. Not much more is made of this in the first book. But Harry has doubts, and the issue comes significantly to the fore in the second book, Chamber of Secrets.

The end of the book features the following exchange (edited into dialogue format).

Harry: So I should be in Slytherin. The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me, and it…

Dumbledore: Put you in Gryffindor. Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue – resourcefulness – determination – a certain disregard for rules. Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think.

Harry: It only put me in Gryffindor, because I asked not to go to Slytherin…

Dumbledore: Exactly. Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. If you want proof, Harry, that you belong in Gryffindor, I suggest you look more closely at this.

[Harry sees the name Godric Gryffindor on the silver sword.]

I previously ranked Chamber of Secrets sixth of the seven books in terms of reading enjoyment. I still found Lockhart annoying this time around, but overall I feel more appreciation for the character development in Harry’s story as I’ve focused on the personalities rather than the magic. I particularly like Dumbledore’s argument – that the choices we make are more revealing than our seemingly innate abilities: Reflecting on past choices I’ve made tells me something about what kind of person I am. But beyond being introspective, making choices allows you to mold yourself along a different character-path.

Thinking about this, I’m impressed with the inclusion of the Polyjuice Potion episode in Chamber of Secrets. Previously, I just thought it was a neat potion allowing for clever use in story-plots (and it gets good mileage in the series) or amusing science speculation. But juxtaposing this temporary bodily-physical transformation with the character-person transformation through one’s choices, gives me a new appreciation for this book. Lockhart’s character provides yet another juxtaposition of this theme; he impersonates the character of others for “choice” material in his books.

The puzzle in Chamber of Secrets is: Who is the Heir of Slytherin? The heir, it is implied, walks in the footsteps or character of Salazar Slytherin. While Hermione is often the information-provider in the Harry Potter series, this time boring Professor Binns gets the starring role. Talking about the history of the Hogwarts founders, he says: “A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families… The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic.”

There are many offshoots to this discussion, but in today’s post I will limit myself to musing on one counterfactual: What if Harry had been sorted into Slytherin? What if he had made a different choice, which was then validated by the Sorting Hat? I’m sure there has been numerous speculation on this topic on the Internet for years. I haven’t read any of it, so here are the fresh thoughts off the top of my head.

I suspect that Harry and Draco would still not have gotten along even if they were in the same house given the Malfoy family history. I doubt Snape would have been any more positively disposed towards Harry, but perhaps might not have tried to single him out for repeated humiliation in Potions class. Would Harry have made the Quidditch team? Possibly – if he stayed in the good books of his house – but he probably would not be Seeker. Or he could “rebel” against his own house – this would be very challenging for him in the residential school environment. Even Sirius Black would not have faced the same kind of pressure at school, having himself been sorted into Gryffindor rather Slytherin, although he was the black sheep of the family.

Could Harry Potter have acted as the next Heir of Slytherin? With Parseltongue, he would be able (guided by Riddle’s Diary) to enter the Chamber of Secrets and command the creature within. Given that Tom Riddle, Heir of Slytherin fifty years prior, transferred such abilities to Harry, all this seems possible. But would Harry imbibe the pure-blood worldview? His early experience with the Dursleys could have moved him in such a direction. However, choosing Ron over Draco early in Sorcerer’s Stone seems to say something of Harry’s character and the choices he makes. He is generous and thankful, and learns to trust his friends, something Riddle never learned to do.

Could Tom Riddle have avoided becoming the Heir of Slytherin? Was there any internal discussion in his head with the Sorting Hat about being a Slytherin? I don’t know. Oh, wouldn’t we all want a Sorting Hat to shunt us along the right path! A path that fits our abilities, strengths, character; and maybe sees the sort of choices we make – then again, I’m not sure the Sorting Hat is that powerful. Furthermore the worldview embedded in the Harry Potter stories is inconsistent with closed futures. Rather choices, truly free choices, have help steer one along the road of life. Some people change their paths. Others do not. That’s the point that Dumbledore makes. And it’s a point that will repeat itself in the subsequent books.

I’m looking forward to Prisoner of Azkaban next!

P.S. My previous reading of Chamber of Secrets explored memory, exemplified by Riddle’s diary and Lockhart’s predilection.

First Week: Hogwarts Edition

It’s the first week of school at the institution I’m visiting on sabbatical. But since I’m not teaching and have no formal responsibilities, for me it’s another non-first week. Why not re-read the Harry Potter books? It’s been over five years. So yesterday I picked up Sorcerer’s Stone and leisurely immersed myself in Harry’s first-year experience at Hogwarts. What jumped out at me this time around was Harry’s bewildering first week at a new school away from home and how he learns to make friends.

Harry was clearly very anxious about many aspects of his new experience. I don’t blame him. He’d just discovered his wizarding identity and knew nothing about navigating the magical world, no-thanks to the Dursleys. He was leaving home at age eleven to a boarding school, location unknown. The curriculum sounded completely unfamiliar, although to his credit he started reading his textbooks before classes started. And he didn’t know anyone, not to mention he had no friends up to this point, again no-thanks to the Dursleys!

I thought back to the times when I went to a new school. My memory is hazy about how I felt. I don’t recall being anxious; and my parents confirmed this to be the case since they would better remember such things. I had several advantages Harry Potter did not have. I started first grade at the school where my brother was in third grade so there was some familiarity. A year later, construction was completed on a primary school a three-minute walk from my home. They were accepting first and second graders, so my parents transferred me there to start second grade. In any case, I didn’t have trouble making friends and enjoyed going to school – we didn’t learn much, but that’s a different story. My parents were schoolteachers (although not at the schools I attended) and they said they kept things low-key so we wouldn’t be stressed about going to school.

Moving to the neighborhood secondary school was similarly non-traumatic. My brother was two years ahead, and I moved with many of my friends from primary school so I knew a lot of classmates already. I made new friends who came from other feeder primary schools. Once again, I enjoyed going to school, not sure I learned much, but there was good camaraderie. Five years later, I went to a junior college in a neighboring country, not knowing anyone, but establishing camaraderie very quickly with fellow students in a similar situation. It was my first time living away from home, but I knew how school “worked” at this point. I also did not have to deal with moving staircases, vindictive teachers like Snape, or having encounters with trolls and a Dark Lord. (For reference to a tongue-in-cheek McGonagall perspective, see here.)

Harry had the additional challenge of being “famous” even before stepping foot at Hogwarts. This must have been a significant burden to bear, on top of the shock of finding out who his parents were, how they died, that he was a wizard, etc, etc. It must have been super-stressful! But he seems to have good instincts on how to pick friends, opting to hang out with Ron rather than Draco. And even though the boys did not like Hermione in the beginning, their intense shared experience of defeating the troll at Hogwarts, solidified the friendship. I also think the House system contributed significantly to Harry’s social environment and fitting-in to Hogwarts. Good thing Harry went to Gryffindor!

Reading through Harry’s experience reminded me of my first-year students when they first come to college, bright-eyed, but also carrying much anxiety. They’re worried about classes, whether they will perform well, whether they will make friends, whether they will get along with their professors, and most of them are away from home for the first time. Residential colleges in the U.S. today have significantly expanded their co-curricular programs for first-year students; retention is a driving factor behind the setup of the now ubiquitous “First Year Experience”. Students today have choices, and I think that adds to the anxiety. Not having had as many choices when I went through school as a youngster, I don’t think I experienced anything close to what my students today go through. When you have little choice, you don’t worry about whether you made the right or wrong choice.

A month ago, I had an extended conversation with the head of counselling services at a liberal arts college. It was very enlightening to hear his perspective on the issues his office faces, and the things that students are going through. (Confidentiality was appropriately kept in our conversation, so we talked mostly in broad generic terms.) Anxiety and depression, the rise of social media, gender-related issues, and more, are faced by today’s students with an intensity that I certainly did not experience. Re-reading Sorcerer’s Stone reminded me to be cognizant about these things. A good thing to consider during the first week of a semester!

Dinosaur Island

Would you like to be the operations manager of Jurassic World? That’s the job of Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) in the movie.

Well, now you can – with Dinosaur Island by Pandasaurus games. It’s a game with lots of bits; I played an Xtreme edition version with a little extra chrome as shown in the pics below. (Poor picture quality is from my shivery hands. Sorry!)

Each player has two boards. The first is to keep track of their stats. On the left are the levels of different types (colors) of DNA needed to make new dinosaurs. The middle portion shows lab improvements. Each player begins with four basic labs such as Dino Research and Tool Bench. In the game below, I have acquired a Ride Improvement for extra Victory Points (VPs). My workers, scientists, and cash are near the top near my company name: Panda Gen, Inc. I’m competing against my fellow-players running rival companies with rival dinosaur parks.

To the right are two columns important to management. The red column is the base threat level of the dinosaurs in your park. Larger carnivores are more dangerous than smaller herbivores. The yellow column is your security level. If your security does not equal or exceed the overall threat level (base + variable), dinosaurs can get loose and eat your patrons causing you to lose VPs.

The second board (below) is your dinosaur park. This echoes the game Zooloretto by having paddocks (for creatures) and attractions, except things are more complex and varied in Dinosaur Island. All players start with a single small dinosaur. Mine is Albertadromeus. My paddock size is one so I will need to increase it before I can create a companion for my lonely dinosaur, which will bring in more customers. I have recently purchased a DNA recipe for a large carnivore, Saurophaganax, but have yet to create one. I will need two purple, one green, one red, one yellow, DNA. My stores (first board, white cubes) show I’m close but I need one more purple.

Each park also comes with one basic attraction: a Hat store. I have recently purchased a Log Plume ride for guests to my park. That’s why I acquired the Ride Improvement mentioned above. A large variety of attractions in Dinosaur Island allow you to pursue different strategies of pursuing patrons. I have also hired a security specialist (card in top left) to improve the security of my park. I’ll need it when I create my Saurophaganax, sure to be a crowd pleaser!

There are two central boards accessible to all players. The first (below) is what I call the Scientist board. Your scientists can increase the DNA in their stores – do they use PCR? I don’t know, the manual doesn’t say. They can also increase the storage limits of their DNA. Do they need minus eighty freezers? The manual does mention “cold” storage. Your scientists can “procure” a new Dino recipe. Among those currently on offer are a small Pachycephalosaurus and a larger Ceratosaurus. Do the scientists discover these through research? I hope so. Or they could be scouring the dino DNA black market if such exists – I don’t know, the manual doesn’t say.

A second board keeps track of the turn order, victory points, the excitement level in each player’s park, etc. There is also a Plot Twist card and several Objective cards, shown below, that provide more variability to each game. The Objectives control the length of the game: Short, Medium, Long. Once a certain number of objectives has been “claimed” the game ends.

At heart, Dinosaur Island is a worker-placement game with some bells and whistles. There’s some money management, and finding combo cards (lab improvements, specialists, attractions) to plot a unique path to victory. You’ll need to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, but there isn’t much direct competition. Unlike the game O Zoo Le Mio where players directly compete for patrons based on their exhibits, each dinosaur park in Dinosaur Island has a number of patrons visit equal to its own internal excitement generated by its dinosaurs. Patrons come in two types from a randomly drawn bag; a small proportion are termed “hooligans” who don’t bring in any dividends.

The card combos and indirect competition reminds me of the game Terraforming Mars (not zoo-related), although more interesting and sustained development in Dinosaur Island requires playing a longer game. The short game is good to get you started, and the first game feels rules-fiddly, but after one game under your belt you will find it overall straightforward. The game is about being an operations manager, so you’re not going to get have your blood pumping when dinosaurs get on the loose and eat patrons – it’s more of a minimax exercise where you sigh briefly if such a tragedy happens, but the show must go on. The short game ends a little too quickly to be interesting, in my opinion.

Of the zoo-like games I’ve played, the closest is Dungeon Petz, also a worker-placement game where you build enclosures, buy strange pets, keep them fed and entertained, and then try to make a profit either by parading them or selling them. Manager of exotic magical pets versus park manager of exotic thought-to-be-dead reptilian beasts. There’s more direct competition in Dungeon Petz and its gameplay is fiddlier, but it feels more thematic and players actually get attached to their unique pets cutely illustrated. In Dinosaur Island, all dinosaurs within a category have identical stats, just different names, and there are only three categories to choose from. You’re much more like Claire Dearing without the excitement, rather than Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt) who gets to know the creatures under his care.

Overall Dinosaur Island is a decent game. The theme is potentially attractive even though game play is more prosaic. Having played many kinds of games, there isn’t anything novel about the game mechanics or how different aspects combine – I didn’t have a wow moment. The version I played has nice bits, if that’s your thing. The game itself takes up a lot of table space. I don’t know if it has staying power. Novel at first, but it might become less interesting after multiple plays. There is enough variety in the card/tile decks for at least a decent number of games before it starts to feel too prosaic.

Science vs Sorcery: Wicked Edition

What really is the difference between science and sorcery?

In the novel Wicked, Glinda poses the question to her instructor during Sorcery class. She and her classmates had previously observed Doctor Nikidik’s “Extract of Biological Intention” imbue a seemingly dead inanimate object with a life of its own in… wait for it… Life Science class. Unfortunately, the details of the theory are not heard by the students, because Nikidik drones boringly – like Professor Binns if this was Harry Potter’s History of Magic class. I would have been very interested to know about the Essence of Life, but all the students heard was:

A little sauce for the soup [mumble]… as if creation were an unconcluded [mumble]… notwithstanding the obligations of all sentient [mumble]… and so as a little exercise to make those nodding off in the back of the [mumble]… behold a little mundane miracle, courtesy of [mumble]…

Then bam! Said object given new freedom of intention almost kills a student. Suddenly everyone pays attention.

I’d love to get my hands on some Extract of Biological Intention. It sounds chemical. Maybe the essence can be distilled from some mixture created by a Potions master, though none is mentioned in Wicked. The existence of such an extract would dissolve completely the already fuzzy dividing line between chemistry and biology, between a Physical Science and a Life Science. If I could make or acquire said potion sometime this year – no, I’m not actually going to bother trying – it would fit very nicely with the team-taught class I’m planning with a biology colleague next spring, since I’m still on sabbatical this spring semester! It would be a wicked demo (pun intended), and students would pay attention every class onwards.

Too bad there’s no other information forthcoming, so back to the story in Wicked.

Glinda is now in Miss (why not Doctor?) Greyling’s Sorcery class wondering about the division between science and sorcery. After all, what she and her fellow students observed in Life Science class looked like a spell had been cast on the inanimate object. Think about it. When you see what you thought was a dead thing behaving as a living thing would, you could imagine living things as being magically animated via sorcery. Let’s consider Greyling’s response.

Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn’t rend, it repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds rather than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled… it is Art. One might in fact call it the Superior, or the Finest, Art. It bypasses the Fine Arts of painting and drama and recitation. It doesn’t pose or represent the world. It becomes. A very noble calling.

First, there’s a distinction between reductionism and emergence, the former associated with science and the latter with sorcery. My view as a scientist is that reductionism and emergence are two sides of the same explanative coin. Although reductionism is what students are mostly exposed to in science class, there’s a sort of symmetry that binds it to emergence – a harmony of constraint and diversification, possibly explaining why life is modular and why subsystems can be modeled using coarse-grained approaches.

Synthesis versus analysis? As a chemist, these two fundamental activities are once again two sides of the same coin. When I discuss research opportunities with students, I use the words Making and Measuring to broadly describe the activities of professional chemists. Some of us do a bit more of one than the other, but they’re both crucial to the chemical enterprise and to the chemical education of our students. We teach our students make molecules and measure their properties.

A distinction is also made between the arts and the sciences. Sorcery is the zenith of the Arts, according to Greyling. We might call sorcery a dark art today, but in stories involving magic, sorcery is presented more as a skill than an art. There’s a similar confusion over the meaning of a “liberal arts” education. We think the “arts” refers to Art, conjuring in our minds painting, dance, theatre, and the like. But in ancient and medieval parlance, the arts are what we would today call skills. Medieval science and engineering were “trade arts”. Sorcery, as least in its practical rather than theoretical form, would be more of a trade art.

I’ve previously argued that Potions is more science than art, chemistry being the natural equivalent of Potions in the non-magical world. I would further claim that scientific knowledge extends to superior magical prowess, but that’s another long topic. But even in our Muggle world, the distinction between science and art is not clear-cut. Expertise in the sciences has much in common with expertise in the arts. Novices bungling in the sciences bungle in the arts in similar ways. Different kinds of knowing, but still within Knowledge unified.

But the novel isn’t about science or magic. It’s about people and politics, societies and communities, friendship and betrayal, what makes us human, why we see others as less-than-human. It’s about the foibles and problems of life, some we think can be alleviated by science, so why not sorcery too? Wizards should try to improve dire conditions. Greyling continues:

Can there be a higher desire to change the world? Not through Utopian blueprints, but really to order change? To revise the misshapen, reshape the mistaken, to justify the margins of this ragged error of a universe? Through sorcery to survive?

Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked, has weaved a clever tale in creating the world of Oz. The main protagonist, Elphaba, who eventually becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, is born standing out with her green skin and sharp teeth. She eventually goes to college, but unlike her roommate Glinda, Elphaba pursues what we would call the natural sciences and not sorcery. It’s an interesting tale of growth, confusion, (im)maturity, and the aforementioned foibles of life. The nature of science and sorcery is a tiny figment of the story, a mere sideline that I’ve chosen to highlight.

I’ve yet to see the award-winning musical based on Maguire’s book, but I’ve been told there are significant differences. I’m now looking forward to experiencing the musical, as part of expanding my experience beyond the philistine. While I enjoyed parts of the novel and its overall intriguing storyline, there are scattered distractions that weaken the plot. The ending is rushed, messy, does not hang together well, and in my opinion this makes it a letdown ultimately. Perhaps I will better enjoy the musical reinterpretation, although I suspect it will not incorporate additional information about the difference between science and sorcery, at least in theory; but it might blend science and art on the stage in joyous sensation.