Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with computerscience

Education while working full time

antgly — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 21:03:06 -0800

I'm a part time college student who studies Computer Science and works full time as a junior mobile developer in New York City for an air travel company. I am currently half way through my undergraduate degree due to family issues and simply because I work the whole week. Even so, courses at Brooklyn College where I go to have the worst schedules for some of the major classes. It seems as if college is for the person with a family backbone and I'm struggling a bit as I do not have such support. Are there any resources available for me so that way I won't delay with college so much while being able to work full time?

tech recruiter for a phd?

zeek321 — Tue, 28 May 2013 07:49:37 -0800

I'm lacking direction in my job hunt. Can you recommend a specific tech recruiter? I know it's supposedly a bad idea to work with a recruiter for all sorts of reasons, but, like I said, I'm lacking direction. I have a non-CS PhD and none of the hot programming languages on my resume. But I've got a computer engineering background, some impressive C++ in my github account, and past industry software experience. And I've been coding my entire PhD (mostly in Matlab ). If an employer had some patience, I could easily become productive in a machine learning or data scientist role, but I'm not sure of an efficient way to demonstrate or communicate this to employers.

Have you had excellent or acceptable experiences with a specific tech recruiter?

SEC staffing

dfriedman — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:17:05 -0800

Does the US Securities & Exchange Commission have computer scientists on staff who can parse trading algorithms? Or is its staff primarily lawyers and accountants? This question arose in the context of talking with a friend about the sudden and temporary crash in the stock markets earlier this week when a Reuters Twitter account was hacked and a false tweet about explosions at the White House was sent out.

We were speculating whether the SEC has the ability to parse and understand traders' algorithms.

Thanks for any insight anyone has.

Should I convert to computer science?

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 07:05:40 -0800

I have an opportunity to enter a computer science program with the fees waived, though with difficult pressures in covering my (low) cost of living during it. On the other hand, my current field has terrible employment prospects and the income difference within a few years might make up for the debt incurred to do this. Please hope me – is this a good idea? I'm currently unemployed a month after finishing a research postgrad in a STEM-related discipline – let's say design and design history, with a strong problem-solving component and some maths but definitely not a quantitative background. During this time, I've been building a web-based public engagement project in my field, taking on freelance research and journalism (none right now), and I managed to scrape through financially. Within the field, and especially in my niche, jobs are in massive demand and offer things like a €18k salary for those with years of experience. I love my field and I love research, but I feel like there's a sunk cost fallacy on the horizon here.

There is a program available here within a respected university, offering a one-year postgraduate (diploma) conversion to computer science, and the fees are waived for STEM graduates (including mine) due to a huge labour shortage in this area. Within this course, there are several streams including software development and data analysis, both of which would appeal to me, and there's a six-month work placement in industry after the year. This seems like an intensive version of teaching myself, with industry connections and a strong tech industry here making employment very likely, and I'd have the benefit of those connections and the piece of paper.

I have regretted not going into computing since leaving a software job in my teens, and though I'm no actuary, my brain runs on problem-solving and curiosity, and I'm fine in maths and strong in logical, methodical work. Doing tentative maths on this vs a PhD in my field or scraping together enough to hang on for years until I find more established work, I wonder if the change might be the better choice.

Financially, I'm €15k in debt (at 9%), I have €1.5k to hand, and I am on unemployment assistance right now. My monthly cost of living is €500 in loan repayments, €420 in rent/bills, and a total of €600 in food/insurance/health/living. I have supported myself almost entirely through college. I may not be able to get further loans, I definitely won't get any scholarship/etc from the school, my unemployment payments will stop, and I am not sure if I would be able to borrow any money from my parents but I will ask. Freelance work is an unknown, as is the prospect of publishing a book on my project, but I will be exploring this. The programme is full-time and daytime, starts in a month, and I don't know if the work placement after is paid.

TL;DR:
- Is this program as good an idea as I think it is?
- Is it worth ending up in a horrible financial position to do this?
- How can I make this work?
- Have you done anything like this and would you recommend it?

Throwaway email: shouldiconverttocompsci@gmail.com

How to take notes in CS classes?

estlin — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:35:09 -0800

I find taking notes in my Computer Science classes challenging. Can you share with me your techniques for taking useful notes that are specifically helpful for CS courses? Some situations that are tough:
- sometimes the professor gives us deliberately buggy code and asks us to talk through its issues - what's the best for replicating the debugging process in my notes?
- sometimes we get many many slight modifications of the same basic program
- sometimes there's stuff I don't fully get, or stuff I know I'll want to refer to in the future - how to keep track of these?

I'm asking because among my classmates, I see three types of note-takers:
a. People who use Microsoft Word or a different word processor to just type notes like I'd do for my history classes - works, but formatting gets all messed up, no handy color coding of different components of the language, and just generally unwieldy if you want to experiment with each snippet of code.

b. People who work directly inside their text editor (we used gedit last semester, using emacs now). If we're working on variations on a change calculator, they save change1, change2, etc - I feel like it's harder to get a sense of the lecture without clicking through every one of those. And what do you do when the professor goes into theory mode and you end up needing to take notes for 5 minutes straight?

c. People who don't take notes at all, who feel comfortable with only thinking through and understanding something once - That is great for them, but I really like being able to recreate sudden blasts of understanding in my notes and reviewing them before exams or when I'm stuck on a bug or whatever.

Metafilter, I know you're lousy with computer scientists and technical folk - here's your chance to shine!

Going back to school at 33 is a great idea! Right?

Mister_Sleight_of_Hand — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:03:07 -0800

Recently I've been thinking of going back to school to get a Computer Science degree but I have a few questions: If I do decide to go back, I'll have to keep working as well. My current job is very flexible (like ridiculously so) even so, I'm wondering how feasible it is to work full(-ish) time and study something like CS at the same time. My girlfriend and I don't have, and aren't planning to have, kids, so that makes life a little easier. Still, how much of my life is this going to eat up?

Related to that, is there any way to fast-track/shorten the time needed to complete a degree? I'm not, and have never been, a professional programmer but I've been writing code for ages. I had a few CS classes back in university (nearly 15 years ago!) and I'm familiar with maybe a half dozen languages or so, though I don't use them all regularly so I'm better with some than with others. Is there a way to skip all the stuff I already know and get straight to the stuff I don't? Has anybody done this? How did you go about it? I'm more than happy to write any tests or do projects on my own time to shorten the total amount of time needed. Is that even something that's possible, or am I just going to have to suck it up and begin at the beginning like everybody else?

At least part of the reason that I'd like to shorten things is because, at 33, I can't help feeling like the old man, washed up and thrown out before I even get started. Not that I feel old in general, but I've heard that the tech industry likes their people young. How realistic is it to think of getting a tech job four-ish years from now when I'm pushing 40? And even if it is possible, do I really want to do that to myself? I realize no-one can give me a definitive answer to that one, so anecdotes welcome. If you've done it, what was it like?

In case it matters, I'm in Montreal and I'd be applying to McGill and I'll be contacting them in the near future to ask questions as well. For now though, the collective opinions and experiences of the hive mind will be greatly appreciated!

Elevator question

Artw — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 09:47:08 -0800

When an interviewer asks an interviewee for a programming job to design an object-orientated elevator control system, what are they looking for in a good answer?

You have to take off your shoes before you can take off your stockings.

Nomyte — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 19:47:43 -0800

I'm slowly working through the problems on Project Rosalind, a bioinformatics primer. Would you suggest working out each solution from first principles, or do you think it makes more sense to look up existing algorithms and implement those? WWaBSD? One great feature of Rosalind problems is that your program has to find the solution in under 5 minutes. I am writing Matlab code, because Matlab is what I know. I realize that Matlab has shortcomings, speed among them. I can imagine going back and rewriting most of this code in C or using it as a way to learn Python/NumPy.

If I approach a problem "cold" and without foreknowledge, I usually write the "naïve" algorithm. In the case of problems where the naïve approach takes O(n²) or even O(n³) operations, this usually forces me to look for places to cut the fat and write more efficient code. So that's good.

On the other hand, the majority of these problems are very basic: find the longest common substring of a collection of strings, count the number of subtrees given a list of edges, that sort of thing. Very efficient solutions to these have existed for decades. Sometimes I'll look at the Rosalind forums and see that user ABC has used approach XYZ and his solution runs in 5 milliseconds. Sometimes this is prefaced with "I looked on Wikipedia and found XYZ algorithm…"

I don't know what makes the most sense for me to do, as a non-computer science, non-bioinformatics person. Doing the problems from scratch teaches me about complexity, but I feel like I'm missing important algorithm theory this way. I know this is impossible to answer as stated, but do most CS students already know about these basic algorithms and then just go and apply them as needed? How much knowledge of specific algorithms does a typical CS undergrad have? How would you suggest I approach these problems to reap the biggest benefit?

How to approach a Masters in Computer Science

dubitable — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:40:32 -0800

I am interested in going back to school for a masters in something, but probably comp sci. I would like some advice on how to approach this. Dear Metafilterians,

Here are the facts or things that I know:

- I just turned 37.

- I've been programming professionally for almost 15 years, and finding a job is no issue (yay).

- I like programming a lot and I'm pretty good at it; I want to continue to do it. I still continue to spend a lot of my free time learning about programming, new languages, new approaches, etc.

- My work up until now has primarily been in the web world; back-end and front-end. Like many developers, I've been learning a bit about mobile development too, as that is the way the world is moving. I don't find it particularly challenging but I don't find it particularly interesting either. I want to try something new, some new discipline within computing.

- Bottom-line, I would like to be a better developer, a well-rounded disciplined software engineer who also has a deep(er) computer science foundation, and maybe some specialized scientific domain knowledge. I want to be using more math every day, working on harder algorithms touching realms of computer science that the average web/mobile developer doesn't touch, working on projects which are on a different scale than most small-to-medium web apps I've built up until now, using languages outside the realm of Java/PHP/Ruby/Python (I'd love to be doing some Lisp or using another functional/multi-paradigm programming language with developers who are as enthusiastic about it as I am...). I would love to be in an obscure discipline requiring deep domain knowledge: something like signal processing, scientific visualization, etc. It'd be fun to be working with academic researchers doing cool, advanced work, but I've got no objections to working at a company either; in fact, I'd probably rather be working on products which provide value to a large user base.

- I'm not particularly driven by money, if that's not obvious. I want to be stimulated and make enough to live reasonably comfortably, if not ostentatiously. I don't care if I never make a million bucks in an IPO and buy a Ferrari...actually, I would probably be miserable with that kind of life.

- While I'd love to learn a lot more about the math and programming involved in game graphics and physics programming, I really, really don't want to work in the game industry from everything I've read.

- Speaking of math, my math skills have largely atrophied, but I know I can get back up to speed; I used to love math in high school and I'm willing to push through it as I need to. Granted, that was a while ago but my interest hasn't dwindled, I just haven't needed to use any math in my career, past basic stuff...further testament to the fact that you really need a minimal amount of math in a web development career. But I digress...

- my undergrad is in...wait for it...music performance.

So, questions I'd love to get your help answering:

- any chance some company/school would want to pay for my degree, in exchange for me working for them?

- considering my interests as I laid them out above, what sub-disciplines should I be looking into?

- is a comp sci masters degree the right way to approach my goals? Related to that, can I get back up to speed in mathematics enough to get into a masters degree program, or, what is involved in that? Etc.

- what schools would you recommend? I live in Japan now, and I'm an American, so let's just say I'm pretty open to going most anywhere that would take me...although a less cold climate would make me happier.

Thank you for your advice!

Which of these CS courses should I take?

lemonadeheretic — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:28:08 -0800

Which introductory computer science course should I take? (I am a very special snowflake.) I'm going to graduate college in Fall '13, and have a hole in my schedule. I would like to get hired to work in recruiting for a start-up in the Bay Area in about a year. To that end, I think it would be really beneficial for me to get some background in programming so that I can at least tell a good programmer from a bad one. I also just want some CS background so that I don't become a 30 year-old with no understanding of how modern society works.

My college doesn't offer CS courses, but we're in a consortium with schools that do. (Those schools are very clear on the point that they don't want prospective cross-enrollment students emailing professors about classes they might want to take, hence why I'm asking here. Also, my academic adviser is a Roman poetry scholar and not very helpful with this issue.)

My options for an intro programming course next semester are:
- 4-credit Java-based Intro to Computer Science for majors at a nearby highly-ranked university that isn't even remotely known for CS.
- 2-credit Python-based course targeted toward "non-majors and majors who want to learn a new language in a structured environment" at the same school. It won't fulfill any prereqs if I want to take more CS courses. If I took this, it'd be on top of a full courseload; otherwise I'd have trouble graduating on time.
- 3-credit Intro to Computing, which doesn't really have much of a description, but is offered at a top engineering school, so it's probably reasonably rigorous/modern. (Also, it might impress people a little if I did well here.) Getting there and back would be a strain compared to the other university, though. I guess this is intended for majors, but it's not very clear.

I don't really have much background in programming, though I've gotten slightly past the "Hello, World" level with both Java and Python before, and I'm trying to carve out a little time to work on it again. I tend to get a little intimidated by programming, I guess. I want to learn a fair amount of theory because it's interesting to me, and I don't think there's much of that in the Python course. However, I would like to be able to play with certain open-source projects eventually, and most of the ones that interest me are Python-based.

Other considerations: I want to go to law school 3-5 years from now, so I do care a little about whether this course will be a GPA killer. I might eventually want to take the patent bar, and I'm not a hard science or engineering major, so I'll need about 20 more credits than I currently have in hard sciences/engineering/CS in order to qualify. It's my understanding that the Python course probably wouldn't count toward those credits.

So, which course should I take? Thanks for any help!

Giant CSV Files Needed

anaximander — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 04:13:16 -0800

Where can I find publicly-available scientific data to use in an Excel project? I need to do a project for a computer science course I'm doing that involves VBA and Excel. Basically, we need to develop a fairly complex spreadsheet application that manipulates data sets - preferably real data, and preferably a lot of it.

I'm looking for data sources that might make for an interesting project. At the moment I'm using a catalog of exoplanets, but I'm wondering if there's something else out there along similar lines that might contain more information to work with. Ideally, I'd like something that can be downloaded in CSV format.

I have a B.S. in Engineering. How can I get into a great Computer Science PhD program?

EthanAI — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:59:40 -0800

I have a B.S. in a mostly unrelated field. How can I work towards getting into the best Computer Science graduate program possible? (My first question here. Sorry for errors.)
I'm a fairly non-traditional student, and I need advice on the best way for me to get into a quality Phd program in computer science.

I'm in my 30's and have a degree in civil engineering. A couple of years ago I graduated top of my class, but from a mediocre school. I have not taken the GRE. Honestly it was my 'safe' and 'easy' choice. What I really want to be doing is research, specifically machine learning/artificial intelligence. Due to some recent life and (positive) health changes, I now feel both capable and obligated to do this. I should spend my life working hard to make humanity better.

My thought is, in order to do the most I can, I should become the best I can. That makes sense right? Therefore my mid-term goal is to work hard and get a doctorate in computer science at the best school I can possibly get into.

My two questions are:
1. Should I try to apply to a quality grad school now (and do the prereqs as a grad student) or get a BS in computer science first from the local medocre school.

and

2. Should I try to get into the best masters program I can, and then try to get into a PhD program at a better school, or should I directly apply for a PhD program (I understand it's common to skip a masters)

Or actually am I worrying to much about getting into a 'great' program and not worrying enough about doing this ASAP and getting into the industry?

I don't mind investing the time. I just want to know I'm doing everything I can.

Handling complex business logic without if-then-else

Foci for Analysis — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:15:46 -0800

I'm working on a web app (PHP) that generates a personalized health guide based on a few user choices. The logic behind the generator is complex enough that if-then-else statements would get too nested, having too many conditions and difficult to maintain. I've been reading about rules engines, DSLs, karnaugh maps, finite-state machine, decision trees, rete networks and behavior trees. In addition to being utterly confused, I'm unsure which of these is the best approach for my app. Which one do you recommend? The guide focuses on a very narrow aspect of health so we're not talking about a super advanced expert system.

It's important that the logic can easily be modified because currently most of it is guesswork and will change a lot.

Leaving tenure-track academia?

unhappyprofessor — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 20:17:57 -0800

Should I quit my tenure-track academic job in computer science? I am a tenure-track professor at one of the top schools in my research area (computer science). Two years in, I'm really not sure this is the job for me. I entered academia because I love doing research, but as a professor, I'm finding that I must context switch constantly (advising PhD students, teaching, departmental and professional service, grant meetings, etc.). This means that I cannot focus on research for long periods of time. I had hoped that I'd be able to make progress despite such context switching, but I'm just not able to focus deeply enough. From talking with other professors it appears that the only way to get long periods of research time is to dedicate the hours in the late evening and early morning to research. As someone who needs 8+ hours of sleep a night, this doesn't work for me.

I'm not sure I like the non-research aspects of my job. I don't really enjoy teaching. I find advising/managing PhD students frustrating because (as is standard in CS) I need them to produce deliverables for the grants from which they are paid, yet most do not realize that they are employees in this regard and either complain about or simply avoid doing what I ask of them. In addition, graduate school isn't a very happy time for most people, and I dislike being the person who is, in some ways, responsible for my students' unhappiness.

I enjoy some of the professional service aspects of my job, but ultimately these don't really count for tenure.

I miss working as part of a team of equals.

I work almost every evening and weekend in order to complete the bare minimum that is required/desired of me. When I am not working, I feel guilty because of the pervasive "pre-tenure professors must work 24/7 if they want to get tenure" attitude. Almost all of my colleagues (male) have stay-at-home wives. I (female, unmarried) do not.

At age 33, I'm not sure I want to continue to live like this until I (maybe, if I'm lucky) get tenure at age 40. I would like to have a job that does not necessarily demand every waking second of my life. I would like to be able to focus on research for more than a few minutes at a time. I would like to get married and have a family. I would like to be happy. As a result, I want to quit and move to industry (probably a research job) however I am worried that I will regret doing so for a) the lack of freedom, b) the lack of "prestige", b) the ultimate lack of job security, d) the fact that as a woman, I will be a pretty undesirable hire in the tech industry once I reach my 40s, and e) the fact that quitting will likely preclude me from ever moving back into tenure-track academia should I want to do so.

TL;DR: Should I quit my academic job? If you left your tenure-track academic job in CS for a job in industry, do you regret it?

How can I best use social media to promote women in computer science on campus?

CrystalDave — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 17:34:55 -0800

I'm newly in charge of social media for my campus' Women in Computer Science group. What should I do to be the best at this? I've been handed a Facebook page admin-ship and a Twitter account. I already know to have anything that the group is doing posted, but what else should I post? Would things like a 'weekly historical fact' blurb be beneficial, or would it more likely be seen as fluff?
Also, beyond what I post, what else should I keep in mind, and are there other things I could do in order to help out the group & group goal as much as possible?

(I already make sure to keep a relatively quiet/functional role in the group, so as to make sure that I don't overshadow anyone, though of course it's something I'm always working to be more mindful of.)

Finding a Disability-Friendly Technical Job

mock muppet — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:45:08 -0800

I can't keep living on disability. I can't go back to school. I'm not good with people. How do I find a part-time job that I can do? Are there no very-part-time CS jobs aside from freelancing? SSI is not covering my costs of living. I need a job that's within my abilities. I can only work 3 weekdays, plus maybe Sunday (though working Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday would be preferable to working Mondays). 3-4 hours a day is my likely limit.

I had to drop out of school - a Computer Science major at a decent university - because of my health - not so much drop out as decide not to try yet again after being kicked out the third time, which makes it much harder to go back. I don't know how to search for part-time programming jobs, if they even exist. Is it a matter of watching the job boards and Craigslist until I find the rare <15 hrs/wk job? I wouldn't know where to begin networking with no contacts.

Outside of programming, what else should I look for? I'm dealing with some fairly serious social anxiety and degradation of social skills, and I can't always rely on my body to carry me physically for hours, or I'd be applying at coffee shops or for help desk/IT support positions. I don't mind working on a team or with people, but I don't think I could handle customers.

The other option I see is to do freelance programming over oDesk or something similar, but having a stable job (with fewer taxes vs. SSI problems) would be preferable.

So, my questions are basically: How can I find very-part-time programming (or Linux sysadmin or similar) jobs? What other kinds of jobs should I be looking for? Is there any other option I'm missing?

Recommend a programmer a book that teaches high school maths step by step

maryrosecook — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 20:18:02 -0800

Can you recommend a programmer a book that teaches high school maths step by step? I did maths at high scool and I was OK at it. However, fifteen years later, after forgetting almost all the maths I learnt back then, I am diving deep into the theory of programming algorithms (sorting, tree structures, graph algorithms and so forth). I find the programming straight forward, but I am struggling with the theory and proof of algorithmic time and space complexities. I am looking for a book that will cover algebra, logs, limits, inductive proof, matrix manipulation and so forth. I'd like a book that assumes a grade school knowledge of maths, has lots of exercises and a gradual learning curve. Bonus points if it is enjoyable to work through.

There are a bunch of other questions where people ask for books to teach them high school maths. However, the answers are directed towards a general understanding of maths, rather than something that is specific to computer science.

How do I know when to leave a good job?

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 19:49:52 -0800

I'm a software developer in my early 30s, working in the defense industry. I'm pretty happy with my job, but wondering if I should move on. I would be looking to move to the San Francisco area. My question is, how do I know when to leave a pretty good job? I know people do this all the time, but I'm pretty risk averse (too much), so I'm having a hard time calibrating my thinking. Also, because the majority of my career has been during this awful economy, I feel squirmy and guilty when I think about leaving a job I've been so grateful to have at all.

Reasons I'm thinking about leaving include:

I moved to a city where I still know no one. Although I like it here in a lot of ways, I've discovered I don't really enjoy seasons (especially the winter one), and it's not very diverse. I miss my family, who now all live in N. Calif. My parents are getting older, etc, etc.

I'm afraid I'll get pigeonholed into my industry if I stay much longer.

I've gotten great experience working on a fascinating piece of software. After many years though, I'd like to try something new. I'd like more breadth, but there's no doubt I have to find it somewhere else.

It might be nice to work with more people my own age. I'm the youngest (by a lot) in my department and always have been. I'm also the only woman on my team. I know there aren't a lot of women in software, but anyone more than just me would be an improvement.

There are some bubbling issues in our team that are uncomfortable, and management is aware and not making any of the necessary decisions to stop it. There's definitely a lack of leadership that's making me a bit cynical. I still enjoy going to work, but for the past year there's been an undercurrent of "I need to get out of here before this thing blows!" which dampens my enthusiasm. If I leave before does blow, I can keep my good relationships with the involved parties.

This is probably silly, but I really would like to be able to throw away (maybe burn?) my slacks and wear jeans to work.

Reasons I'm hesitating:

I like most of my co-workers. We've been working together for a long time and and we're a lot like family (including being a bit dysfunctional, I guess).

In spite of the problems within our team, our managers are basically good people and stand up for us.

We generally have good working hours. We do a 9/80 schedule and crunchtime is not too frequent. We had a bad year once where we were putting in a scary amount of hours for a long time, and it was hard on me. I don't mind if I know there's an end in sight and it won't be constant, but I have this idea that this might be the relentless norm in software and I worry... Trading in a 9/80 for what might end up being a 9/90+ feels like giving up massive amounts of PTO.

The company produces a product that I am fond of--I like that, even though I'm just support staff to the real engineers.

Even by awkward geek standards, I don't socialize very well, so I worry about how well I would fit in at a more normal company.

The pension??

Sorry for the "Anonymous Question" novel. I'd be so grateful for any insight from people who have already been down this road... throwaway email: career.q@hotmail.com

Getting a master's degree when disillusioned with academia?

Foci for Analysis — Mon, 21 May 2012 07:03:01 -0800

I've always been drawn to science and research and I'm strongly considering going to graduate school to get a master's degree in computer science (location: Sweden) and maybe even aim for an academic career. But my recent experiences with academia has left my disillusioned, sad and angry. Can I get my degree without GRARing all the time? How? I'm about to finish my undergraduate studies (computer science), having previously taken a couple of years off to work. Although I only needed to study for just a semester (four courses) it's been a frustrating experience:
* I've been working with students - undergraduates and graduates - that come off as lazy and irresponsible, forcing me take on more work that I should have too.

* Most of the courses have been poorly designed and executed. The have been too easy, the pedagogy has been lacking, the contents has been irrelevant, outrageously few lectures in one course, etc.

* I'm frustrated with the low quality of learning/teaching. Sure I've learned things but not to the extent I would have expected. I look back at this semester and I feel that I've gone through the motions of learning, that I've wasted six months of my life.

I know that if I'm going to graduate school to get my master's degree, I would have to put with several more courses, which seems utterly dreadful. The only thing I'm looking forward would be writing a thesis but I don't want to suffer through more pointless courses just for that.

Needless to say I'm no longer excited about an academic career. There seems to be too much bullshit, administration and indifference (both from students and professors) going on when teaching and researching. I need to feel that the things I do have a deeper meaning that's shared by others.

Have you been in a similar situation where you wanted to get your degree but couldn't stand all the pointless nonsense involved? How did you go about getting your degree?

Please rec some good learning materials

puppetsock — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:14:03 -0800

Statistics, machine learning, and image analysis/processing. Two months. Self-study. No other obligations. Recommendations? I need to get a firm grasp on all three topics before graduate school and would really appreciate suggestions for learning materials! I have a computer science degree with a math minor (no, stats was not required), so the sky is the limit! "Out-of-the-box" suggestions are very welcome. Feel free to comment on one, two, or all. I won't be in a classroom setting, so anecdotes about your lightbulb learning experiences are good!

They made me learn Lisp

shothotbot — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:49:46 -0800

What are the big stories in Artificial Intelligence research these days? I was an AI-focused cognitive science major about 20 years ago. What are the big problems in AI today? who is working on them? What language are they using? How are they doing? What is the most important paper published in the last 20 years?

Bonus points for other interesting recent developments in the cognitive science world

Help with clickable map.

Raichle — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:57:45 -0800

Need suggestions on creating an interactive map of congressional districts. I'd like to have a map embedded on my site (only Us) with zoom-able and click-able Congressional districts. When a district is selected, I'd like to display the relevant Senator & Congressman. I'm pretty well-versed in PHP/Ajax but I'm not sure how to easily tackle this. I was looking into using KML overlays in Google Maps but I find them to be really time-consuming, finicky, and have a cluttered appearance with the markers. I'd rather not a have markers at all, in fact, just clickable regions. I also would like the map to *only* show the US. All suggestions welcome. Thanks!

Show me how to flip a coin 15 times and tell me all 32,768 possible outcomes

mcstayinskool — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:27:57 -0800

How do I find every possible outcome of an arbitrary length set of coin flips? How can I programmatically calculate all possible outcomes of a consecutive set of binary choices, when the size of the set N is arbitrary?

Simple case, N = 3:



for my $a (0..1 ) {

  for my $b (0..1) {

    for my $c (0..1) {

        print "$a $b $c\n";

    }

  }

}

results in the output:
0 0 0
0 0 1
0 1 0
0 1 1
1 0 0
1 0 1
1 1 0
1 1 1

In English, you have three coin flips, therefore there are 2^3 = 8 possible scenarios for the set of 3 coin flips.

Now I want to be able to do this where the depth of those for loops is arbitrary. That is, I'd like to come up with every single possible outcome of N coin flips.

I know the answer lies somewhere with recursion, but my brain seems to be failing to make the connecting for writing the logic. My example above is in Perl, but any language or pseudo-code would be welcome in an answer.

If it's of any interest, what I'm doing is simulating all remaining possible outcomes of the NCAA bracket (16 remaining teams, N = 15 games, or 32,768 possible scenarios). Ideally, I'd construct myself a 2^N element array in which each element was an N length list of 0s and 1s.

help me learn python ...

phoenix_rising — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:49:46 -0800

Recommendations for a Python tutorial for someone with no programming experience? I'd like to learn some Python basics for data analysis purposes. I'm overwhelmed by the torrent of tutorials that pop up with a google seach. Where to start? Has anyone out there learned Python as their first programming language? I was wondering if any folks could recommend a particular resource (website, book, etc) for someone with nearly zero programming experience and very little knowledge of computer science in general ... i.e., I need to start at the very beginning. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Awesome computer science research videos

mathtime! — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:50:27 -0800

Help me find awesome videos for high school students that show interesting new algorithms research. I'm not looking for detailed explanations of algorithms. This is to catch student interest by showing an awesome video and saying: This is real research that people in computer science are doing right now.

Two random examples: Arbitrary object tracking, and data-driven enhancement of facial attractivness