A researcher at University of California at Irvine got $100,000 from the National Science Foundation to study how Americans play the popular online game World of Warcraft, The Orange County Register reports.
A hundred thousand dollars to study a video game that pits ax-wielding ogres against a cast of other fanciful characters? That would buy about 50,000 cans of Red Bull to support those late-night gaming, er, “research” sessions.
As it turns out, the informatics professor, Bonnie Nardi, has already studied how the Chinese play the video game, which is used by 10 million people worldwide. In China she worked to debunk the notion that gamers there are interested only in turning World of Warcraft’s fake currency into real money.
Now she is out to determine why American players, who number just half of those in China, make more modifications to the game, she wrote in an e-mail message to Gary Robbins, the ScienceDude columnist for the Register. “We are examining the many reasons for this disparity, including cultural and institutional factors,” Ms. Nardi said.
Maybe a budget line for 3,000 Red Bulls will do. That leaves $94,000 for any additional expenses.—David DeBolt
5 Responses to Professor Given $100,000 to Study World of Warcraft
gasstationwithoutpumps - June 13, 2012 at 9:47 am
“If f’(a) = 0, then f attains a local extreme value at a” isn’t quite a true-false question, so I’d have a hard time with it given the forced choices. Sometimes it is true, but not always. It is a good place to look for extrema, … This is the sort of question that sends gifted kids into paralysis—how much do they expect the question-asker to know? Do they give an answer that they know is wrong, in the expectation that the person asking the question has some simplified, but incorrect model of the world? Or do they give a technically correct answer that will be seen as rule lawyering?
I can see the same problem come up in a physics class, where a teacher assumes a Newtonian definition of momentum, but the student realizes that it is only an approximation to a relativisitic one, and doesn’t know whether to answer with the Newtonian or relativistic answer.
Robert Talbert - June 13, 2012 at 10:20 am
The statement you quoted is a mathematical statement that is either always true, or it isn’t. Since the statement isn’t always true, we say it’s false. It’s not really a question about frame of reference or which physical model is being assumed. This in itself is a pretty important thing for mathematics students to realize.
Andy Shores - June 13, 2012 at 12:13 pm
In your example, was there a reason why you listed the options in the way you did? Specifically, I would have probably reversed answers C & D for readability. I’ve never written True/False questions in this fashion, and I was just curious if there was a reason for the order listed.
Robert Talbert - June 13, 2012 at 12:30 pm
I was thinking of it as sort of a vertical Likert scale, like “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. It would work better if it were not vertical.
elimba75 - June 15, 2012 at 7:51 pm
I have the strange feeling that this discussion applies nicely to religion as well. Two thousand years ago, those who listened directly to Jesus Christ understood him clearly. There were no misconception nor misunderstanding about his teachings. There were also no bible, no cross and … no Christians. Later on, when these teachings fell into the hands of Emperor Constantine (the first converted Roman emperor), they turned into an instrument of power and control through misconceptions that endured for a long time. Nowdays, with the plethora of christian denominations, churches and sects, I am not sure that “misunderstanding is easier to correct than misconception”. The author’s argument may certainly be true with logical reasoning in science and engineering. It could take a lot more effort to prove it in a religious or spiritual context.
BTW, I am a mathematician, a computer scientist, an artist and a philosopher.