Computer Science | Grinnell College

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).

We’ll wrap up our semester with a fun topic for CS Table: Esoteric Programming Languages. These programming languages are intentionally designed to be complex, confusing, or funny, and often offer some clever commentary on the real programming languages we use.

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).

At the November 21 CS Table, we’ll be discussing the phenomenon of the Gig Economy—an economy characterized by independent workers contracted for short-term jobs—and how recent developments in technology have supported this new economy. The most famous of these is Uber, and in particular, we’ll look more closely at how Uber uses data science and psychology in tandem with mobile technology to power its driver networks (for better or worse). Please read this pair of meaty (but intriguing!) articles:

• Nathan Heller. Is the Gig Economy Working? The New Yorker. May 15, 2017.
• Noam Scheiber. How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons. The New York Times. April 2, 2017. The online article features some excellent data visualizations of the concepts described within the article.

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).

Robots are fun, but what happens when we decide to elevate them from simple tool to citizen? Granting citizenship to a robot has already been done in Saudi Arabia. Join us for CS Table to discuss the general implications and what this means for society and computational thinking as a whole.

• Maza, Cristina. “Saudi Arabia gives citizenship to a non-Muslim, English-speaking robot”, Newsweek, 26 Oct 2017.
• Wootson, Cleve R., Jr. “Saudi Arabia, which denies women equal rights, makes a robot a citizen”, The Washington Post: Innovations, 29 Oct 2017.

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).

This CS table discussion will cover computer-aided gerrymandering: the ways that legislative district boundaries are drawn to favor specific parties or interests, and how computers have changed this process in recent years. The reading and listening below should give you some useful background information on what gerrymandering is, where it came from, and recent developments in the process.

• This short podcast (21 minutes) gives some useful background information and introduces the Gill v. Whitford case heard by the US Supreme Court this fall.
  • Rameswaram, Sean, narrator. "Who’s Gerry and Why Is He So Bad at Drawing Maps?” Radiolab Presents: More Perfect, season 2, episode 4, WNYC Studios, 2017.
• The following articles look at how computers can be used to place boundaries between legislative districts, both in support of gerrymandering as a potential tool to draw fair legislative districts.
  • Ellenberg, Jordan. “How Computer Turned Gerrymandering Into a Science”, The New York Times: Gray Matter, 6 Oct 2017.
  • Oberhaus, Daniel. “Algorithms Supercharged Gerrymandering. We Should Use Them to Fix it”, Vice: Motherboard, 3 Oct 2017.

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).

This week in CS table we will be discussing the memo circulated by a former Google employee criticizing the company’s approach to workplace diversity. I expect this discussion to be wide-ranging: cultural issues in the tech industry, current and proposed strategies for recruiting diverse tech workers, and questions about protected speech in the workplace. We will have assistance in this discussion from several campus partners interested in culture change.

• The New York Times has a nice summary of the events surrounding the memo:
  • Wakabayashi, Daisuke. "Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out." The New York Times. 8 Aug. 2017.
• The two following articles raise interesting criticisms of the both the original memo and the way it has been covered:
  • Devlin, Hannah and Alex Hern. “Why are there so few women in tech? The truth behind the Google memo.” The Guardian. 8 Aug. 2017.
  • Friedersdorf, Conor. “The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo.” The Atlantic. 8 Aug. 2017.

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).

Interactive Toys have long been heralded as an introduction to technology. Although toys such as Hello Barbie and Feisty Pets have been heralded as the new frontier and games such as Minecraft are often viewed as educational, these toys and games present a few drawbacks. At this week's CS Table, we will discuss these toys and the pros and cons of this exposure.

There are two readings:

• Travis Andrews. Are Interactive Toys Interfering With Child Development? Mashable, 2/25/2014.
• Emily McReynolds, Sarah Hubbard, et al. Toys that Listen: A Study of Parents, Children, and Internet-Connected Toys. ACM CHI 2017.

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).

This week’s CS Table will feature a panel of students that attended the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing last week. They will share their experiences at the conference as well as give advice on how to get the most out of your conference experience if you attend such a conference in the future.

View the GHC website for more information on the conference

• Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

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).

This week in CS Table we’ll hear from several Grinnell students who attended the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing two weeks ago in Atlanta. They will be discussing their experiences at the conference and share advice on how to get the most of your time at a computing conference like Tapia. We will also have a broader discussion about why we have a conference like Tapia and its importance for computing.

Brief readings to give you context for the discussion

• Richard Tapia Bio
• Tapia conference website
• Tapia conference schedule

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).

We will discuss the ethical decisions that machines have to make as automation plays a larger role in society, and we will examine some of the ways that machines are already making ethical decisions. We have two readings for the upcoming discussion:

• Can You Program Ethics Into a Self-Driving Car? N. Goodall. IEEE Spectrum, 31 May 2016.
• Why Machine Ethics? C. Allen, W. Wallach, and I. Smit. IEEE Intelligent Systems, July/August 2006.

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).