Week 3 Studio: Classify your own idiot light

Bring a real telltale from a car you have access to and argue whether it's genuinely binary or a continuous measurement flattened into one light

8 March 2027

Before the studio#

Photograph or sketch one telltale from a real dashboard — yours, a family member’s, a manual, or a press photo if nothing else is available. Find out, even roughly, what triggers it: a pressure switch, a voltage comparator, a diagnostic trouble code. You don’t need the exact number, just enough to know it’s a threshold on something continuous.

In the studio#

Working in pairs, each person presents their telltale and its trigger, then the pair sorts both examples along a line from “genuinely binary” (a door ajar, a seatbelt unbuckled — there is no meaningful middle state) to “continuous value flattened” (oil pressure, coolant temperature, tyre pressure). For anything on the flattened end, argue where you’d put a second threshold if you were allowed one, and what that buys the driver. Idris collects one example per pair on the board and the studio ends by voting on the single worst offender in the room.

Afterwards#

Write up your telltale’s classification and your proposed second threshold (or your argument that none is needed) in two or three sentences. Keep it — week 4 asks you to give that same telltale a symbol, and week 10 comes back to ask whether adding states made it more trustworthy or just noisier.