Once you see the ladder of abstraction you can’t unsee it. Family Feud is a game show that’s played on the ladder. When Steve Harvey says, “Name something that gets passed around,” that’s a higher level of abstraction than all of the items listed: a joint and the collection plate at church.
Every other quality of the joint and collection plate is eliminated except their passed-around-ness.
Which game show works in the other direction, giving you lots of items and asking you to move one level of abstraction higher to the category that includes them?
2013 Mar 18. Andrew Stadel mentioned on Twitter that he gives students on level of Family Feud’s abstraction (the joint and the collection plate) and asks students what higher level of abstraction they all belong to (“things you pass around”). Great idea, easily adaptable to mathematics also.
11 Comments
Jason Dyer
March 13, 2013 - 8:28 am -Password?
Larissa
March 13, 2013 - 9:06 am -Jeopardy!
Chris Robinson
March 13, 2013 - 9:07 am -Taboo.
Pseu
March 13, 2013 - 9:28 am -Is the n-Thousand Dollar Pyramid still on?
Simon Willerton
March 13, 2013 - 11:03 am -The BBC’s Only Connect.
Andreas
March 13, 2013 - 11:03 am -What is Jeopardy?
;)
Andrew Browning-Couch
March 13, 2013 - 11:05 am -Definitely the Pyramid
Sarah
March 13, 2013 - 2:37 pm -I thought of the Pyramid as well.
Derek
March 14, 2013 - 9:43 am -I use two different games in my class: Tribond and Clever Endeavor. The questions come in a box like trivia pursuit. These are great at the end of the hour when I need to eat up a few extra minutes.
Jason
March 14, 2013 - 5:41 pm -Definitely Pyramid, especially the awesome bonus round. One partner (usually the celebrity) needs to make a list (very strict rules about this actually) and the other player needs to say the category. Many great clips of this on YouTube, last I knew Billy Crystal had the record even. And it also works great in math class, I’ll post more about it but gotta run to school now.
Jason
March 16, 2013 - 10:49 pm -Writing a blog post about playing The Pyramid Game in class turned into a much deeper rat hole than I anticipated. A little Keynote and Illustrator work later though and the I think the results are decent.
Here is a link: https://jason-roy.squarespace.com/news/2013/3/17/the-pyramid-game