A Walk in the Forest to Discover the Bayesian Universe !
At Toxicode, promoting the scientific method and critical thinking is of great importance to us! We had the opportunity to offer a workshop at the University of Children of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in December 2022, and we seized the opportunity to propose an original creation that would allow a group of students to discover a rational approach based on Bayesian probabilities. Of course, no calculations or advanced academic concepts that would be beyond the reach of beginners!
Instead, within this framework, we propose an educational approach through play, with a coherent universe and a situation in which students/players can easily immerse themselves.
Concretely, we created a virtual universe in the form of a game where we take control of a small probe that must analyze certain types of mushrooms in order to identify those that lead to the treatment of a particular disease.
Each test yields a positive or negative result. There are several varieties of mushrooms, and it is necessary to test multiple mushrooms of the same species to get an idea of the positive or negative nature of the species in question.
The students/players can then recommend the mushroom if they believe it is useful for the treatment. If that's the case, the players are rewarded with a certain number of points.
Otherwise, a larger number of points than the previous reward is deducted from their score. The probabilistic nature of the game comes from the uncertainty inherent in this detection process.
During the game, the student will acquire additional tools to make choices and the most appropriate bet for each case (More details about the gameplay can be found here).
Indeed, initially, the uncertainty of the result creates difficulty in deciding whether or not a species of mushroom should be recommended. In subsequent phases, a cursor will appear to help update one's prior belief about the quality of the mushroom, and that's precisely what the Bayesian perspective is all about!
For more details on how the cursor works, you can check the dedicated article.
Offering a workshop to children on such a topic is an (extremely) ambitious project. If, moreover, as we wished, the whole thing should take place within a game, the mission becomes downright perilous!
The University of Children was an opportunity for us to dare to take up this challenge. Did we succeed in achieving what we wanted to do?
Not really, unfortunately... Around twenty children aged 9 to 12 participated in this workshop. Their feedback was positive, and they had a good time.
However, we encountered a few bugs, and the workshop flow was not well-structured enough. Whether it was in terms of how we presented each element or the order in which we performed certain steps during the introduction.
Nevertheless, the children who participated in this workshop were able to grasp tools of the scientific method and discover that even if there are no absolute certainties in certain situations, there are still rational solutions that assist in decision-making. They were able to see this in practice as the tools we implemented allowed for a higher score than when we rely solely on intuition.