Why can’t I find my stuff?
I don’t want to confuse matters too much here, but I actually think you don’t even need the room/gloves analogy. I would just start with the hotel analogy and dive right in. That’ll save you some space in the intro that you can then use to describe a little more depth about the algorithm or its time savings. Maybe even give some real numbers - Google stores 45 billion index pages, so how long would a non-algorithmic search take??? (Probably hundreds of years? And then contrast this with how long it actually takes Google to find stuff - less than a second.)
[1]Narrator:
It’s winter time and I’m getting dressed to go outside. But every time I start putting on layers after layers of clothes,[2] I always can’t seem to find my gloves. (location in the dorm; scene of me putting on layers of clothes and discovering in horror that I lost my gloves) Are they in the kitchen? On my bed?On the couch? Oh dear, I seem to have a problem. [3]Why can’t I find my stuff? Is it because I have a lot of[4] stuff that makes it so hard to remember?
Well, Google stores about 45 billion index pages of information.[5][6]If each page of information was a sheet of paper (host holds up a piece of paper) and if we stacked them all together, we would create a tower of paper 610 times taller than Mount Everest! (camera men on the sides dump a mountain of papers on the host, causing him/her to comically fall over)
So how can a search engine like Google find your search results so quickly while I find it so difficult to find a pair of gloves?[7]It’s like finding a needle in haystack; so how’s it done? (a camera closeup while the host hold up in his/her hand a needle and casually throws it in the stack of papers)[8]
Well, it turns out that searching on the Internet is kinda like looking for a person in a hotel room. (*change scene: a sonorous “ding!” sound of a hotel lift, a pan shot of the interior of Hyatt Regency Cambridge hotel)
Here’s James and he is going to hide in his hotel room. But we want to find where is James.[9]
The simplest way would[10] be to run through every room nearest to you and keep finding[11]. But that would take a long time.
Is there a better way I can find James? Hmmm.. (rub chin and raise one eyebrow)
Well, it turns out that t[12]here’s a better way known as Binary Search.
(*The keywords “Binary Search” flashes over the host’s hands)
Let’s say the people were arranged in alphabetical order in[13] increasing numbers of the hotel rooms. We could run to the room in the middle and check if the name of the person in the room is James. And then if the person starts with a smaller alphabet than James[14], we head to the left. If not we head to the rooms to the right.[15][16] We then head off to the middle room of the newly sectioned area. And we rinse and repeat. Eventually we will find James just like the first method. But we find James at a much much shorter time[17].
(The above scene would be done with simple animation drawing over my head with the host talking below on the camera)
How much shorter would that be? Well, that depends on number of people staying at the hotel. Let’s say it takes 10 seconds to knock on each hotel door and there’s 500 people, it would take about 80 minutes for the first method and 1.5 minutes for Binary Search. If there were a thousand people in the hotel, it would take 160 minutes for the first method and only 1.6 minutes for Binary Search. Now that’s a whole lot of difference.[18]
(I suspect there might be a better way of illustrating this point that a slightly better algorithm make a huge difference when dealing with large problems)
Is finding James such a big deal? Well, yes! Finding James faster means getting your results on Google faster.Because finding James is like searching a keyword term on Google. And that means less waiting time for all of us.[19]
So how does any of what we just learned help us to find things better at home? Noticed how the people in the hotel were arranged in rooms numbers based on alphabetical order? So the location of each person in a different hotel room depends on the alphabetical relationship of their names. So we don’t need to remember which person is in which room, we just need to remember the alphabetical relationship that all the people have with each other.[20][21]
In the same way, simply by placing your home items in locations where they have a natural relationship to makes it easier for us to find them. The TV remote goes near the TV, the shoes go to the shoe rack, the coats go into the cupboard and the the winter gloves goes in the winter jacket[22].
(location is back in the dorm *Finds gloves in the jacket)
Aha! So that’s where my gloves are![23]
And that’s how we find stuff better. Not a just little bit better but a lot better![24]
MIT OpenCourseWare
20.219 Becoming the Next Bill Nye: Writing and Hosting the Educational Show
January IAP 2015
For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit:
[1]I agree with the clothes/cold story. It's not relevant to the rest of your piece. You could be looking for a lost glove IN the hotel? But the piece about you being cold etc. is distracting from getting to the main story.
I won't comment throughout because my comments don't add a ton more and you've got a lot of feedback. GREAT job!!
[2]just replace with 'and'
[3]Remove
[4]replace with 'so much'
[5]connect into this thought a little more explicitly. You may have a hundred objects that you're trying to keep track of, but Google has 45 BILLION (!!)
[6]I think it would be cool if you could do something to visually reinforce that you have stuff, but Google has TONS of stuff (maybe similar to the bacteria in the fart video?)
[7]GREAT opening question. Nicely set up.
[8]you can remove
[9]Remove - remember, you're going to show, not tell.
[10]add 'to find James, for instance'
[11]until you found him
[12]can remove to keep momentum going
[13]replace with 'with corresponding'
[14]reword: 'if that person's name starts with a letter after j,'
[15]I think this is a scene where overlaid animations would be helpful, at least for me. For example, when you check a room and wave hello, a graphic with "Carl" appears over whoever opens the door. Then an arrow with "J" over it points left, and you head that direction.
[16]Also this may be a misconception I have from reading left to right - but if they started with a letter like F, wouldn't they head right to try and find J?
[17]replace with something like: "but we found him much faster than by using the first method!"
[18]Great that you really honed in on your example here to give people a sense of scale.
[19]How big of a deal? What are the applications of this in the way computer programmers search and organize today? You've set the video up perfectly, now really finish the video with a strong conclusion! Tie the analogy back to the question about Google - how does Google uses binary search?
[20]I don't think you actually need this paragraph because you've sort of implied that this organization helps you find things better. Use this time to flesh out to bigger application of binary search in computer science.
[21]Agreed, I would rather learn more about the next paragraph - how programmers can organize webpages just like we would organize our physical stuff.
This extends your metaphor and draws the audience in more rather than reiterating the same point over and over again.
[22]Similarly, programmers of search algorithms develop tools that 'organize' pages of the internet in these ways?? Flesh this out. End with the big picture application (you've already talked about the first analogy enough)
[23]Good. End this way.
[24]Remove