Computer Science | Grinnell College

On Thursday, October 8, Alex Exarhos 2010 will present the results of his summer research on analyzing videos:

I worked with a set of video indexing and searching algorithms through a Department of Homeland Security internship. These algorithms are capable of quickly providing a summary of a video by breaking it up into sections based on the content, and this method of indexing makes it possible to instantly locate other images, frames, or video segments within the indexed library. I will also talk about the web services I created for these algorithms, and the work I did implementing a mobile interface for a Google Android phone.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Interfaces for video analytics, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821.

At noon on Friday, October 2, in Science 3821, Professor David G. Kay will give a presentation entitled Why so many?: A historical view of the early development of programming languages:

Java. Scheme. C++. Python. There are dozens of programming languages in common use today. Each has its adherents -- often highly partisan adherents. High-level programming languages have been available at least since Fortran in 1954; why haven't we agreed on a common language by now? Why is there so much heat (and so little light) when programming languages are compared? We try to answer these questions with a historical look at how and why some of the major programming languages were developed. We find that, as with many technical issues, the ultimate success of a programming language depends as much on social, economic, and historical factors as it does on the technical merits.

Professor Kay teaches in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, where he holds appointments in the departments of Informatics and Computer Science and serves as Vice Chair of Informatics. He has degrees in linguistics, law, and computer science; his current academic interests include computer law, computer science education, software engineering, human-computer interaction, and the teaching of writing and other communication skills.

Pizza and soda will be served before the talk. Everyone is welcome to attend!

This talk also serves as this week's CS Table.

This week in Computer Science Table, we are exploring an intersection of software and the law. In particular, we're considering some issues of copyright and patent in software, and what those issues reveal about the U.S. intellectual property system.

Boyle, J. (2009). What intellectual property law should learn from software. Commun. ACM 52, 9 (Sep. 2009), 71-76. DOI=https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1562164.1562184

CS Table meets at noon on Fridays in JRC 224A. All are welcome. Computer science students and faculty are particularly encouraged to attend.

This week in Computer Science Table, we're exploring a different side of things. In particular, we are considering some under the hood issues in some common programming areas, such as strings, memory allocation, and databases.

Spolsky, Joel (2001, December 11). Back to Basics. Joel on Software. Web page at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000319.html.

Some questions to think about for this meeting: How are strings represented internally in your favorite programming languages? If you had a choice of how to represent strings internally, what would you do? Are all versions of malloc created equivalent? What flaws do you see in Spolsky's comments?

CS Table meets at noon on Fridays in JRC 224A. All are welcome. Computer science students and faculty are particularly encouraged to attend.

On Thursday, September 17, Dennis Vaccaro 2011 will present a talk in the Department of Computer Science's Thursday Extras series, entitled Graphical user interface development using the Qt toolkit.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821.

On Friday, September 11, the topic of CS Table is Technology and Disability.

Shinohara, K. and Tenenberg, J. 2009. A blind person's interactions with technology. Commun. ACM 52, 8 (Aug. 2009), 58-66. DOI=https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1536616.1536636

Copies of the reading will be available outside Sam Rebelsky's office, Science 3824.

CS Table meets at noon in JRC 224A. All are welcome. Computer science students and faculty are particularly encouraged to attend.

On Thursday, September 10, Jerod Weinman of the Department of Computer Science will present the first talk in this year's Thursday Extras series, entitled Efficient machine learning for computer vision-based depth perception.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821.

On Friday, September 4, the topic of CS Table is Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew. (2009). Hello World: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program. The Chronicle Review 55 (20), January 23, 2009, pp. B10-B12. Available online at http://chronicle.com/article/Hello-Worlds/5476/.

Copies of the reading are available outside Sam Rebelsky's office, Science 3824.

CS Table meets at noon in JRC 224A. All are welcome. However, computer science students and faculty are encouraged to attend.

The first meeting of Grinnell's "CS Table" will be this Friday, August 28, at noon in JRC224A. The topic of the first CS Table will be What I did this summer. Yeah, it's old hat, but we'd like the opportunity to catch up with everyone.

For this first meeting, the department will cover the cost for students not on board. Sign in at the ID station.

We look forward to seeing you there! (We also look forward to your suggestions for topics for CS table.)

The Computer Science majors of the class of 2009 are:

• Ian Wolfcat Domhan Theocharis Atha
• Trevor Allen Austin
• Ian Miles Bone
• Theodore Rhys Cooper
• Emily Rose Jacobson
• Jasmine Nicole Brittany Jarvis
• Berendt Joel Kuipers
• Kennon Richard Landis
• Tony Leguia
• Scott Michael McIntyre
• Timothy Michael Miller
• Arunabh Singh
• Samuel Charles Tape

Congratulations to all!