The Progressive School Vol 04 Issue 01

news & events
90th CBSE Foundation Day
celebrated
The 90th foundation
year of CBSE and
25th anniversary
of Sahodaya School
Complexes was celebrated
at Vigyan Bhawan in
New Delhi. Union HRD
Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal
‘Nishank,’ was the Chief
Guest on the occasion. Minister of State for HRD Sanjay Dhotre,
Secretary School Education and Literacy Amit Khare, and
Chairperson CBSE Anita Karwal graced the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, the HRD Minister complimented
CBSE on bringing so many school leaders under one roof. It
appeared that the entire nation had come together to celebrate
education. The celebration of 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth
anniversary, 90 years of CBSE and 25 years of Sahodaya is bound
to bring good outcomes for the nation.
Minister of State Shri Sanjay Dhotre, in his address,
complimented CBSE for the overall development of students’
physical, mental, academic and spiritual development through
its programmes and initiatives. He said that NaiTaleem rested
on the ideology of uplifting the weak and inclusive growth for all
and that moral development and character building is integral to
good education.
To commemorate 90th Year of CBSE, a Memoir on the Journey
of CBSE was released by the dignitaries. The Board also released
3 more Books for teachers and students to provide information
about different activities in CBSE.
Researcher from Queen’s
University Belfast develops
algorithm to make artificial
intelligence fairer
Dr Deepak Padmanabhan, a
researcher from Queen’s
University Belfast has developed
an innovative new algorithm that will
help make artificial intelligence (AI)
fairer and less biased when processing
data. Dr Padmanabhan has been
leading an international project, working
with experts at the Indian Institute of
Technology Madras (Savitha Abraham
and Sowmya Sundaram), to tackle the discrimination problem
within clustering algorithms.
Companies often use AI technologies to sift through huge
amounts of data in situations such as an oversubscribed job
vacancy or in policing when there is a large volume of CCTV data
linked to a crime. AI sorts through the data, grouping it to form
a manageable number of clusters, which are groups of data with
common characteristics. It is then much easier for an organisation
to analyse manually and either shortlist or reject the entire group.
However, while AI can save on time, the process is often biased in
terms of race, gender, age, religion and country of origin.
A researcher in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science and the Institute of Electronics,
Communications and Information Technology at Queen’s, Dr
Padmanabhan explains, “AI techniques for data processing,
known as clustering algorithms, are often criticised as being
biased in terms of ‘sensitive attributes’ such as race, gender, age,
religion and country of origin. It is important that AI techniques
be fair while aiding shortlisting decisions, to ensure that they are
not discriminatory on such attributes.”
Over the last few years ‘fair clustering’ techniques have been
developed and these prevent bias in a single chosen attribute, such
as gender. However, Dr Padmanabhan has now created a method
that, for the first time, can achieve fairness in many attributes. Dr
Padmanabhan comments, “Our fair clustering algorithm, called
FairKM, can be invoked with any number of specified sensitive
attributes, leading to a much fairer process. “In a way, FairKM
takes a significant step towards algorithms assuming the role
of ensuring fairness in shortlisting, especially in terms of human
resources. With a fairer process in place, the selection committees
can focus on other core job-related criteria.
Noble Laureate, Kailash
Satyarthi facilitates 50
child prodigies
Children, sometimes,
astonish us with their
exceptional talent and
recognition encourages them
to do more. 50 such budding
talents were felicitated at the
Global Child Prodigy Award
2020 held in New Delhi. The
awards were presented by
Nobel Peace Laureate Shri
Kailash Satyarthi and Dr.
Kiran Bedi Hon’ble Lieutenant
Governor of Puducherry.
Addressing the gathering
Kailash Satyarthi said, “It is an
honor to award these young
prodigies today. I would want
to extend my congratulations
to the parents of these prodigies who have supported their children.
I would request the parents to not be an instructor to your children
but to be a guide to them. Parents should adopt the ideology of 3R,
Recognize, Respect and Reward towards their children instead of
the 3I, Imposition, Instruction, and Impeach.”
A total 100 students were selected to be part of the list of
100 exceptional prodigies of the world 2020, out of those 100,
50 were felicitated. The selection committee has judged these
wonder children on various parameters and finally came up
with a list of 100 prodigies. The list includes talents from
myriad backgrounds showing core competency on their area
of interests such as Martial Art, painting, modeling, writing,
entrepreneurship, social work, acting etc. These children come
from countries like USA, UK, UAE, Spain etc.
Children from India have also shown a good presence in
the list. Kautilya Pandit from Haryana, Ishita Katyal-Author,
Aarit Gupta-Author, Ayan Gogoi Gohain-Author, Ayaan Zubair
Rahmani-Actor are some of the prodigies from India. They have
impressed with their extraordinary talents.
60 THE PROGRESSIVE SCHOOL oct-nov-dec 2019
www.progressiveschool.in