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This makes total sense. I have also been very careful to not let LinkedIn get access to my email or contacts - precisely cause I don't trust what they will do with that data on my behalf. But they still manage to suggest all these random contacts that look like they're coming from my address book. A few times I have panicked and made sure I hadn't accidentally given them access. But it makes sense that the other side gave them access and they are trying to get a match.

I do like LinkedIn as a professional network. It's helpful when going into meetings, I can check out the people's backgrounds and use that as added context / something to relate with. It's helpful when trying to figure out whether someone could be a good sales/biz dev opportunity based on their background and experience. If I trusted them more, I may consider integrating them more tightly with some of my sales funnel workflows - but for now, I will continue using them as a standalone tool.

DragonBox is one of my favorites to teach basic algebra to my eight year old nephew: http://www.dragonboxapp.com/. It came out of a research project at U of Washington.

I also love doing Maker projects because I believe the best way to teach math is to build real-world, functional things that show the end purpose of math. For example, I have done this workshop with my nephew too which really engaged his interest in math and STEM more broadly: http://www.einsteinsworkshop.com/now-enrolling.

You definitely have the right perspective. If I put my kid's hat on, it definitely would be fun. Doing the simplest things with my nieces and nephews are extremely fun :)

Ha totally agree. The loops and vicious turns are central to a roller coaster (and being tied to the track). Without those, sledding is way better cause you can get some serious airtime on the right hills and have some control over your direction too.

Overall a neat project for a large college team to work together on but the end product doesn't appear that functional/fun.

Yea I thought the most interesting thing was the very brief mention of "Future models might use one of the gecko-inspired materials that let people climb up walls using Van der Waals attractive forces."

I think there have been attempts at trying to create Gecko-like adhesives like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geckel. But I am pretty sure there are a lot of details that Geckos have evolved/optimized for - surface area/shape of their setae/legs, angle of contact from their hyperextended toes, ability to stick in different humidities etc. - that would be difficult to recreate for football receivers on the field to actually take advantage of Van der Waals forces.

Yea this is great. As an applied math major in college, modeling was my favorite class with so many variations of ABMs with Monte Carlo randomness. Like you, I was focused on social sciences, specifically economics so love these methods to better simulate and understand our world.

My friends and I have taken similar shots at putting this functionality online, and turning it into a game is a great idea! Especially a game that helps teach/learn different concepts. For example, we had a previous project that allowed folks to learn Javascript by programming the AI for your different units in a RTS game. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough money/time to support it - hopefully we can bring it back online soon - but you can see more info on this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1alfd9/jav...

Similar to you, we were using HTML5 canvas with a CodeMirror editor so users could modify and republish their own version in real-tim. I think you could do something similar where users had to modify the code (to different extents which could be levels) to get it to flock in certain ways. And then actually give the flock some real world story/context. That would be really cool.