G.4 Organize a debate. One side represents the algorists and the other side the abacists. The year is 1400. Debate the merits of the Roman numeration system and the Hindu-Arabic numeration system.
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G.5 Organize a debate. The issue: "Resolved: Computers can think."
G.6 Problem G6 in Algebra. In a now famous paper, Alan Turing asked, "What would we ask a computer to do before we would say that it could think?" In the 1950s Turing devised a test for "thinking" that is now known as the turing test. Dr. Hugh Loebner, a New York philanthropist, has offered $100,000 for the first machine that fools a judge into thinking it is a person. In 1991, the Computer Museum in Boston held a contest in which 10 judges at the museum held conversations on terminals with eight respondents around the world, including six computers and two humans. The conversations of about 15 minutes each were limited to particular subjects, such as wine, fishing, clothing, and Shakespeare, but in a true turing test, the questions could involve any topic. Work as a group to decide the questions you would ask. Do you think a computer will ever be able to pass the test?
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G.7 Construct an exhibit on ancient computing methods. Some suggestions for your exhibit are charts of sample computations by ancient methods, pebbles, tally sticks, tally marks in sand, Roman number computations, abaci, Napier's bones, and old computing devices. You should consider answering the following questions as part of your exhibit: How do you multiply with Roman numerals? What is the scratch system? What is the lattice method of computation? What changes in our methods of long multiplication and long division have taken place over the years? How did the old computing machines work? Who invented the slide rule?