Computer Science | Grinnell College

May 7 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.
This is the last CS Table of the semester.

The last topic will be something a little less serious than our usual CS Table material: estoteric algorithms. We’ll spend the hour looking at algorithms (and data structures) that are intentionally inefficient or amusing. For example, this classic XKCD comic introduces five different esoteric sorting algorithms.

We will have a few algorithms and data structures prepared, but we would like your suggestions, too! Please send suggestions to Prof. Curtsinger by email, preferably by the end of the day on Monday, May 6. Please include a code or pseudo-code snippet we can show on the projector during our discussion.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

April 30 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

Recently, Facebook announced that it will be partnering with the Social Science Research Network to provide anonymized Facebook data to Social Science Researchers. This week in CS table, we will discuss some related issues with big data and anonymity.

Sarah E. Igo (7 October 2018). We Are All Research Subjects Now - And Cold War-era safeguards won’t protect us. Chronicle of Higher Education.

Jon P. Daries, Justin Reich, Jim Waldo, Elise M. Young, Jonathan Whittinghill, Andrew Dean Ho, Daniel Thomas Seaton, and Isaac Chuang. 2014. Privacy, anonymity, and big data in the social sciences. Commun. ACM 57, 9 (September 2014), 56-63.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

April 23 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

Eric S. Raymond’s "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is a classic essay on software development and open source communities. This writing was later turned into a book, but the original essay (with some later additions) is available online.

The full essay is a bit longer than some of our regular readings for CS Table (around 18 pages), but it is still a fairly quick read. You can find the essay at: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/.

If you are interested in how this essay was received, you may enjoy reading some of the responses to this essay under “Commentary and Argument” on this page: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

April 16 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

Let's look at an important case study in safety-critical software: the Therac-25. This was a device built to administer radiation to patients under carefully controlled conditions, but the device suffered from a critical flaw that made it possible for patients to receive dangerous levels of radiation instead of the carefully-controlled doses the machine was designed to administer. We’ll explore what went wrong, and discuss the lessons learned (or not learned) from this case.

• A History of the Introduction and Shut Down of the Therac-25. ComputingCases.org
• Nancy G. Leveson, The Therac-25: 30 Years Later. IEEE Computer, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 8-11, 2017.
• If you are interested in digging deeper on the issues with Therac-25, the original report is also available:
  Nancy G. Leveson and Clark S. Turner, An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents. IEEE Computer, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 18-41, 1993.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

April 9 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

This week we discuss "The Autocrat's New Tool Kit" by Richard Fontaine and Kara Frederick, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal on March 15, 2019.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

March 12 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

The reading this week is The Story of Mel: a classic short story about a "real programmer" to give you some historical perspective on computing. There will probably be terms that aren't familiar to you, such as "drum memory," "core memory," and "machine code." While the faculty can provide some context during the discussion, we recommend that you do a bit of delving into strange terms in advance.

• Ed Nather (1983). The Story of Mel. Usenet.
• You can find an annotated version of the story here.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

March 5 CS Table location: CS Commons (3817), noon.
RSVP by noon on March 1 to be included in the pizza order.

At CS Table we will discuss the innovation (or lack thereof) driven by technology companies, guided at least in part by a critique of Google’s "moonshots" that appeared in Communications of the ACM: Thomas Haigh. 2018. Hey Google, What's a Moonshot?: How Silicon Valley Mocks Apollo. Communications of the ACM 62, 1 (December 2018), 24-30.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

Feb. 26 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

At CS Table we will discuss Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

To prepare for our discussion, please read the selection of short articles that appeared in Communications of the ACM in late 2012, and one of the many retrospectives on MOOCs that has appeared more recently. All of the articles are brief, but contain many links to outside sources. You are encouraged to read all of these articles and explore some of their links, but any subset of these articles would be helpful for you to prepare for our discussion.

• Will Massive Open Online Courses Change How We Teach?
• Will MOOCs Destroy Academia?
• In the Year of Disruptive Education
• Research Questions About MOOCs
• Why MOOCs Didn't Work, in 3 Data Point

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

Feb. 19 CS Table location: JRC 224B, noon.

In honor of the recent talks about 3D reproduction of Mayan sites, we will discuss the ownership of the data associated with such reproductions. We have two readings, and both include links to other possible resources.

• Esther Shein. Who Owns 3D Scans of Historic Sites?
• Sam Billingsley Jr. Intellectual Property in the Age of 3D Scanning and 3D Printing.

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).

Feb. 12 CS Table location: JRC 224B

In CS Table on Feb. 12, we will discuss some of the concerns around sharing location data and the implications that sharing location information can have for individuals and society. We will read about two separate cases to inform our discussion.

In the first case, we will read about how cell phone companies sell users’ location information to third parties. Cox, Joseph (2019). I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300, Then He Located Our Phone. Motherboard..

The second case is a recent development in New York City, where police officers object to sharing the locations of officers conducting sobriety checks. Gold, Michael (2019). Google and Waze Must Stop Sharing Drunken-Driving Checkpoints, New York Police Demand. The New York Times..

As you read about each case, consider the following questions: who owns location data, when is it acceptable for location data to be shared, and what are the consequences of sharing location data?

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 12:00–12:50pm. Most CS Tables for the spring semester will meet in JRC 224B inside the Marketplace, though a small number will be in an alternate location, so watch each week for the location. 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).