Computer Science | Grinnell College

Thursday, February 22, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

This Résumé Building and Interview Preparation Extravaganza is brought to you by your SEPC and will be dedicated to helping you look as good on paper as possible.

We will be going through how to start the process of building your résumé, and, if you already have an outline, how to edit it to showcase yourself. Bring your résumés so you can get feedback! A portion of the session will address prepping for interviews, where your friendly neighborhood SEPCs will go over common questions you may encounter in interviews and how to respond to them.

Computer Science Accessibility is an incredibly important issue in the CS community today. Even our own introductory courses have evolved to reach as many audiences as possible. However, there are still many obstacles faced when creating a truly accessible curriculum. This week we'll be discussing computer science for the visually impaired.

Readings:

• Florian Beijers. A vision of coding, without opening your eyes. Medium. Jan 27, 2015.
• Kiley Sobel, Kyle Rector, Susan Evans, and Julie A. Kientz. Incloodle: Evaluating an Interactive Application for Children with Mixed Abilities. CHI 2016, ACM. May 7, 2016.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:45pm in JRC 224A (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

Wednesday, February 14, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 2021

Note the different location and different day of the week: WEDNESDAY in Noyce 2021.

The CS department and the CLS are co-sponsoring an alumni panel on Life and Career and Diversity and Inclusion after Grinnell in Tech. The cast of players will include CSC 322 Mentors Cassie Koomjian '05, Alex Leach '06, Ian Young '08, and Terian Koscik '12; and Megan Goering '08 of Human Centered Design and her partner Joe Mellin of Microsoft. They will all give a brief description of their life and careers and then have time for questions and answers.

Thursday, February 8, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

A Functional Approach to Data Science in CS1, presented by Professor Samuel A. Rebelsky, discusses the new "data science" version of CSC 151 he has been doing with Titus Klinge and Sarah Dahlby Albright.

As part of the development of a new interdisciplinary initiative in data science that draws from statistics, mathematics, computer science, and the social sciences, we have developed a new introductory CS course that emphasizes data science and that we refer to as DataCSCi. Unlike other introductory data science courses, such as Berkeley's Data 8, our course retains the broad array of concepts necessary not only to introduce programming principles related to data science, but also to prepare students for the second course in our standard introductory computer science sequence. In particular, the course includes coverage of recursion (numeric and structural), unit testing, linked data structures, and other concepts we rely upon in subsequent courses in computer science.

At the same time, we introduce students to a wide variety of techniques and approaches that support them in their subsequent work in data science, including techniques for wrangling, cleaning, and visualizing data. We achieve this combination of breadth and depth through two core approaches: We focus on a spiral "use then implement" approach and we focus on a functional model of programming using Scheme/Racket. While Python and R are the most commonly used languages for data science, we find that Scheme works particularly well to introduce students to concepts both complex, like map-reduce, and simple, like list filtering.

This week in CS table, we'll discuss what ownership looks like in a digital world. How have our expectations and rights around ownership changed in the wake of digital goods and services? What have we gained and lost as consumers?

To prepare for our discussion check out the first (sample) chapter of Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz's 2016 book, The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy.

The reading gives an excellent overview of the considerations and problems in this space; take notes and try to form "the big picture" in your head of digital ownership. We'll begin our discussion by trying to capture these concerns. In addition, come equipped with one example of a consumer product that is beginning to shift (or has already shifted) from a physical to a digital good. We'll use these more specific examples to try to hone in how we can respond to these changes.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–1:00pm in JRC 224A (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the JRC front desk).

Thursday, February 1, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

Diversifying the CS Pipeline through Innovative Code Camps shares the results of a summer research project by Caelin Bryant, Jonathan Gilmour, Bea Herce-Hagiwara, Anh Thu Pham, Halle Remash, Marli Remash, and Jonah Zimmerman.

The underrepresentation of women, students of color, and people from lower-SES backgrounds within computer science remains a national issue. Recent studies demonstrate one reason for this: persistent stereotypes about "who does computer science" can cause members of underrepresented groups to preclude interest in the field. Join us this Thursday to learn about how the use of art, data science, social good, and summer camps contributes to adolescent self-efficacy as well as the future diversity of our discipline.

At the January 30 CS Table we will discuss the recently-announced Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities. These are complex security vulnerabilities that rely on two important features of modern processors: speculation and out-of-order execution. In addition to a technical discussion of these specific vulnerabilities, we’ll discuss the ways in which vulnerabilities are disclosed and fixed.

There are two assigned readings for Tuesday. The first gives a non-technical analogy for both vulnerabilities, and should be helpful for getting a handle on how these vulnerabilities work. The second looks at the implications for end users and the tech industry.

• Hubert, Bert. "Spectre & Meltdown: Tapping into the CPU's Subconscious Thoughts." ds9a.nl. January 06, 2018.
• Timberg, Craig, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Hamza Shaban. "Huge Security Flaws Revealed – and Tech Companies Can Barely Keep Up.” The Washington Post. January 06, 2018.

If you are feeling adventurous, you may want to read the original Spectre and Meltdown papers at https://meltdownattack.com/. These are relatively accessible and include a quite a bit of background information.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–1:00pm in JRC 224A (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the JRC front desk).

Thursday, January 25, 2018
4:15 p.m. in Science 3821
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Science 3817)

A discussion of Summer Research Opportunities in Computer Science at Grinnell is presented by members of the CS faculty and a few guests. You'll hear about research projects with CS faculty members and about the application process. You'll also hear about opportunities from a few people from outside the department who would like to hire CS students. And we'll have an overview of the general policies for MAPs, 399s, and MIPs.

At our first CS Table of the new year, we'll discuss potential topics for this semester.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–1:00pm in JRC 224A (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the JRC front desk).

Grinnell College is hiring for several multi-year visiting positions in Computer Science. We invite interested parties to read more about these open positions, why consider visiting in CS at Grinnell, and some recent questions and answers about those positions.