Your new post is loading...
Your whole life, reduced to a single number. That’s the goal of an increasing number of companies that are attempting to analyze specific aspects of your life and quantify certain behaviors with a single score. The best known of these companies is Klout, which promises to quantify your Twitter and Facebook behaviors into a single measure of "online influence." By some estimates, over 100 million people now have Klout scores - whether they know it or not. And with the recent popularity of Klout, new scorekeepers are emerging as well, such as the FICO Medication Adherence Score that tells health care insurers how likely you are to take your prescribed medicine and Identified, which gives employers a single measure of how "in demand" you are as a professional.
An interesting play on words ... clout vs Klout. It's so easy to count your social connections when those connections are made via technology. This basic question, "What's your number?" could be presented to 8th-9th graders at the start of a number theory unit and revisited throughout the unit.