Jan 29, 2015 'There is a common and damaging misconception in mathematics – the idea that strong math students are fast math students,' said Boaler, also cofounder of YouCubed at Stanford, which aims to inspire and empower math educators by making accessible in the most practical way the latest research on math learning.
Home heating uses more energy than any other residential energy expenditure, making increasing the efficiency of home heating an important goal for saving money and protecting the environment. We have built a home-heating system, PreHeat, that automatically programs your thermostat based on when you are home.
PreHeat’s goal is to reduce the amount of time a household’s thermostat needs to be on without compromising the comfort of household members. PreHeat System PreHeat builds a predictive model of when domestic spaces are occupied and then heats them only when necessary, saving the household money and reducing the amount of energy used while maintaining or increasing the occupants’ comfort levels without requiring the user to manually program their thermostat. Surveys have found that fewer than 50% of U.S. Households have programmable thermostats, and even worse, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 30% or more of U.S. Households with programmable thermostats are not using their thermostat’s programming feature. PreHeat eliminates the need for manual programming. We have been running PreHeat in 5 houses, 3 in the U.S. And 2 in the U.K, since January 2011.
Easy Programmable Thermostat
In the UK homes, we are learning the schedule for each individual room separately, allowing for further energy savings since different rooms can automatically learn and follow different schedules (e.g. Nobody goes into the study in the mornings). Our system uses active RFID and passive IR-based occupancy sensors, temperature sensors, heating system controllers (including for forced air systems (U.S.), water-filled radiators (U.K.), and underfloor heating (U.K.)), and PC-based control software using machine learning to predict schedules based on current and past occupancy. During our deployment we are comparing occupant’s comfort and cost in three heating conditions a) PreHeat, b) Always-on: leaving the thermostat always-on at a comfortable temperature, and c) Program: using a heating program specified by the household members. While our study is ongoing, preliminary results in our five houesholds for prediction accuracy, comfort and cost of PreHeat compared to the other two conditions are encouraging.
The Second-Generation Nest learning thermostat has been on store shelves for a couple of months, and on the wall in my home for a couple of weeks. The idea of an easy-to-use programmable thermostat that I could control from my phone held a lot of appeal, as did the potential energy savings. So, with some time to try it out, did it live up to the hype? Oh, did it ever.
First, installation was incredibly easy and within just a few minutes of taking it from the box, it was controlling our heat. Second, it looks really cool.
It's a slim, unobtrusive dial that's been trimmed down a bit from the first generation. It glows red when it's heating, blue when it's cooling, and has a cute little leaf that appears to let you know you're using it in a way that conserves energy, or empties your wallet. Image: Nest If you don't like messing around with temperatures and times and trying to program your thermostat to perfectly match your daily activities, then this is the thermostat you want in your home. It learns when you're in and out based on how you initially set temperatures and will make the changes all by itself.
Not to worry if you want to change the temperature on your own, just turn the dial. You won't mess anything up and it will continue to do its job.
There's also an away mode that you can preset with min and max temperatures. This lets you quickly set it to away without having to think about a temperature setting every time you leave the house. What I loved most, though, is the ability to adjust the temperature from anywhere. If I turn up the heat and then forget to kick it back down, all I have to do is pull out my phone and I can change the temperature. I can also turn up the heat from my toasty warm bed if I'm up early so I don't have to freeze first thing in the morning. The retails for $249.99, and it's worth the price and then some.
The increased control you have over the temperature, the fact that the Nest learns how to set the temperature, the ability to adjust the temperature from anywhere, and the energy savings potential make it worth every penny.