Charlestown High CS Community Outreach

Featuring some of the interactive activities the EPS101 course, an hour long EPS workshop geared towards a younger crowd piloted on 10th of December 2015 with Boston public school, Charlestown High. The workshop ran with 13 students grades 9-11 with varying levels of English language understanding with the help of a faculty member, Dr. Leonardo Gomez.

Opening with an ice-breaker called Stay Between, the students learn and experience how simple rules can create chaotic and complex systems. The room becomes quite animated as the students mill around attempting to stay between their 2 chosen people.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma exercise uses gaming theory or strategic decision making to analyze decisions made under uncertainty. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is expanded upon in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Playing several times with the same opponent teaches how payoffs and strategies change when the game is played multiple times. In the Evolution version of The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma each students is provided with a strategy for the game and earns a "fitness" based on playing it. With fitness in hand, we then collectively act out the steps of evolutionary selection and replication.

This project was supported by Li Ka-Shing foundation September 2012 - May 2015.