Link Dump 2015-02-28

2015-02-28

I apologize for missing the mid-month link dump. I was really busy with papers and job search things. Naturally, this post is lengthier than usual to include the links I didn't post. Surprisingly, most of them are about computer science, education, and computer science education.

• Reading and writing:literacy::programing:? One blogger suggests the answer is the ability to model things with code, the argument being that literacy is not the ability to read and write, but the ability to comprehend and compose. There's a grain of truth in that, but I don't think modeling is the right answer to that analogy. Programs are also written and read, so I think computing literacy is the ability to comprehend and compose programs - in other words, being able to think computationally.

• Math with Bad Drawings is a web comic blog by a high school math teacher. He wrote a series about how students avoid thinking in math class, although the one on students needed a teaching around to be confident is not strictly that. The problems he faces often have direct analogies in computer science. His latest post on student's focus on finding the right answer, however, I thought was a little off - especially since the student said "Oh, you were talking about this extra stuff, like the ideas behind it and everything. I don't... you know... do that." I thought the point was going to be about the student having a different, but equally valid, algorithm for solving the problem.

• Technology and computer science is a field with a very low cost of entry... assuming you have a computer, internet access, ample free time, and a support system.

• The number of computer science students is on the rise again, and colleges are struggling to keep up with the demand. But could this be why we have the boom-bust cycle in the first place?.

• The state of Washington is considering making computer science count as a foreign language in high school. I have no words for this.

• A cool visualization of the gender gap in RateMyProfessor.com reviews. Also provides cannon fodder for "my discipline is X-ier/more X than yours" arguments.

• More fodder: your college major is correlated with your standardized testing scores. The causality and societal implications are unclear, although it's disturbing regardless that education majors consistently have the lowest scores.

• Most computer science tenure-track faculty come from a small number of graduate programs, and a similar trend can be seen in other disciplines. I'm still undecided as to whether this is actually "privilege bias" (as the article suggests).

• An adjunct professor of physics complains about his low salary and general treatment by his university. I'm have opposing reactions that not sure I can put into words, so I'll just leave the link as it.

• Speaking of college level jobs, as someone on the job market, it's terrifying to hear colleges rescind an offer after an aggressive startup package negotiation.

• A good education system is not just about the teachers, counter to what US politics would have you believe. It's about the entire culture we build around education.

• Harvard and MIT are being sued for not including closed captioning in their online course videos. I'm surprised they are not also being sued by advocates for the blind.

• The mathematical ability of education students at McGill University (or lack therefore) scares me.

• Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, suggests that the general population's abysmal understanding of science is because science does a terrible job of public relations. In particular, scientists always proclaim to be certain about things, then several years later reverse their positions. Hacker News debates whether it's the fault of scientists or the fault of the media reporting of science; regardless, I think the general population still doesn't get that updating our beliefs based on new evidence is a good thing.

• Being playful and curious is important for grad school (and I would argue, for life). The question is how we train people to be playful.

• Someone proved the correctness of a blogging platform using the theorem prover Coq.

• Apparently there was a period where we designed computers to use base-3 (ternary). It's also the first time I've heard of a "balanced notation", where instead of using {0, 1, 2} as the digits, you use {-1, 0, 1} - so you go over the number you want to present, then subtract some from it. It actually is pretty elegant.

• Facebook is flagging Native American names as fake. Understandable from Facebook's point of view, unfortunate for Native Americans. Add it to the list of falsehoods programmers believe about names. (Along similar lines, falsehoods programmers believe about addresses, and time, and geography...)

• My desk is not nearly as bad as some of these other PhD students. (But I refuse to post pictures.)

• Uber allowed its pricing to surge during the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, predictably drawing the ire of many. Uber claims it's to "encourage more drivers" to help evacuate the area, while the article questions the consequences for poorer citizens. The comments are vitriolic (as always), but at least one person has the right idea: does the author seriously expect drivers to spontaneously go into a dangerous area to pick up passengers, for free? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, nor that in the ideal world it wouldn't be better... but to believe that in the real world would be naive.

• City Museum++: now with "quests" and physical and mental challenges.

• A luxury rubber-band car.

• Satanists are hilarious. I mean, they have coloring books!

• The Stone Mind talks about the stories we tell ourselves. Relevant quote from Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind: "You see, there's a fundamental connection between seeming and being. [...] We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be. [...] It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."