Domino is a game piece with a line down the middle that separates it into two square ends with a number of spots or dots—called pips—on each end. Like playing cards or dice, dominoes can be used to play many different games. Most sets contain 28 dominoes, but larger ones may have more or less. In the West, the two most popular domino games are Block and Draw.
The most common dominoes are made of plastic or other polymer materials. Most of these are colored, but they also can be made of wood or even ivory. Dominoes are available in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors, and they come with various designs on the pips. Some sets are designed to look like ancient marble, granite or soapstone, while others have a more modern and sophisticated style.
Besides being fun to play, dominoes can be an excellent educational tool. They help to introduce students to the concept of pattern recognition and addition equations. They can also be used to teach students how to identify and use inverse numbers. They can also help reinforce Mathematical Practice Standard 8, which asks students to look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. For example, first graders may notice that when a domino has the same number of dots on each end, it can only be added to with one of two addition equations: 3 + 4 = 7 or 4 + 3 = 7.
Another way in which Domino can be used is as an analogy for a phenomenon known as the domino effect. This is the idea that one change in a system will trigger a chain reaction that results in a shift in related systems, for instance, when people cut back on their sedentary leisure activities, they tend to reduce their fat intake as a natural side effect. This principle can be applied to business strategy as well: when you make one positive change, it can spur a number of other changes that lead to success.
In politics, the term “domino theory” has been used to describe United States foreign policy toward Latin America in the 1970s. In the 1977 Frost/Nixon interviews, Richard Nixon used the domino theory to justify his administration’s destabilization of the Allende regime in Chile. He claimed that a Communist Chile and Cuba would form a “red sandwich” that could entrap Latin America between them.
A Domino Data Lab is a unified platform that orchestrates the entire end-to-end data science lifecycle. It provides a single place to store and process data, enables teams to work collaboratively, makes it easy to integrate with version control systems like Bitbucket, and supports a broad range of open source and premium tools, including machine learning, predictive analytics, statistical models, visual data exploration and more. It helps speed up time to value from AI and increases collaboration across hybrid multicloud infrastructures. It enables users to leverage their preferred tools and existing data and allows them to create, prototype, and deploy models into production.
