Girls Day Out in STEM Bake-off Challenge!
The following article has been written by the team at GDOS, Eureka Explorers and Careers with STEM.
This National Science Week, combine machine learning and baking in the Girls Day Out in STEM Bake-off Challenge!
You might have heard that learning to code is as easy as learning a recipe. Now, girls aged 10 to 14 can put that to the test! Meet two Google Cloud engineers, Marina and Natalie who used a machine learning (ML) model to make a whole new type of baked goodie. They have trained a ML model to create completely new recipes. “We got the idea for the project from our colleagues Sara Robinson and Dale Markowitz who did this first,” says Marina.
Natalie Piucco
Google Cloud Engineer
Marina Deletic
Google Cloud Engineer
“We collected 700+ recipes and categorised them into cookies, bread or cake. We then trained a machine learning model to recognise what ingredients and amounts of each ingredient most likely creates a cookie, bread or cake.”
“We used Google’s Vertex AI AutoML model generator to do this, all we had to do was give it the data and it found the best model using a Neural Architecture Search algorithm – very cool stuff!”
“To generate the new recipes, we found the ingredients that had the midway properties of a cake and a cookie to create a cakie, and then those that were midway between bread and a cookie to create a breakie.”
So you might ask, what is machine learning (ML)?
Machine learning is the process where applications use data to learn. It is used in many areas, like predicting stock market changes, personalising shopping experiences, analysing social trends like cyberbullying or instances of disease outbreaks, and to recognise and identify images, including facial recognition.
Machine learning is a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While many people think AI will lead to job losses, more jobs are being created (97 million) than will be displaced (85 million) by 2025 by AI according to a Future of Jobs report 2020.
That means there’s heaps of opportunity in AI and coding for you to explore in terms of careers - and what better way to start than with a baking challenge!
How does the Girls Day Out in STEM ML Bake-off work?
Register: Get access to the SECRET recipes 💻
Prepare: Reach out to your friends and family to form your team 👧 🧒🏼 🧒 👧
Organise: Grab your ingredients 🥣
Bake: Enjoy with friends and family 🍪
Share: Let’s see your finished product 🧁
Poll: Vote to have your say 👏
Win: All those registered will be in the draw to win prizes 🎉
Sign up to access the SECRET ML recipes that will be revealed on Saturday, August 14th at 9:00am when the vault opens 😲
You have one whole week to do the baking challenge during National Science Week August 14-22, 2021, then share and poll for a chance to win!
Behind the scenes of our National Science Week Bake-off Challenge…
Baking and coding is an interesting combination, how did this come about?
Currently girls aged 10 to 14 are at home with their families due to COVID-19, so we were racking our brains trying to think of an appropriate, fun, home activity that incorporated STEM for this National Science Week’s theme – Food: Different by Design.
As we’ve collaborated with Google over the years, we were aware of Google’s AI and machine learning (ML) modeling. Also, baking has been trending now in Australia, so we thought, let’s connect the two: food design x baking + STEM x AI + ML. Voila, we had the winning combo! What better way to deliver a complex tech concept such as ML modeling/coding than with baking.
What can girls expect to experience in the challenge?
The girls can expect to have a lot of fun with their friends and family baking with ML.
Our challenge gives the girls the opportunity to not only learn about this technology, but also to see firsthand how to think differently and creatively with it.
The Google Cloud engineers have trained a ML model to create completely new recipes: 50% cookie + 50% cake, a cakie and 50% bread + 50% cookie, a breakie = WOW!!
They wanted to use their modeling tools to show how something as mundane in our daily lives as recipes and ingredients could produce brand new products – in this case the cakie and the breakie.
So girls – let your voice be heard and VOTE in the bake-off poll: Is it the CAKIE or the BREAKIE?
What is Girls Day Out in STEM (GDOS)?
GDOS helps girls aged 10 to 14 aspire to a career in STEM through education, working with professional female role models and through opportunities in STEM.
Join us this National Science Week for Food Different by Design with the Girls Day Out in STEM Challenge: Register now.
Registrations close on Sunday, August 22, 2021 at 11:59pm AEST. Limited to one prize per address, household, and/or email. Full terms and conditions here