I just wanted to let you all know (can't remember if anyone has linked
these) that Stanford is offering some free online courses, like a CS101 by
Nick Parlante that is starting April 23:
"CS101 teaches the essential ideas of Computer Science for a
zero-prior-experience audience. Computers can appear very complicated, but
in reality, computers work within just a few, simple patterns. CS101
demystifies and brings those patterns to life, which is useful for anyone
using computers today."
Best!
Heather
Designer at the Wikimedia Foundation
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif(a)shlomifish.org> wrote:
Hi Sarah (and all),
On Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:31:43 -0400
Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Nice article, thanks for sharing Lennart!
"She was consistently told by teachers in adolescence
<
http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/puberty-and-adolescenc…
,
then later by colleagues, that the things she was interested in were
things women didn't do, and that there were no good female
mathematicians," Dr. Pippenger said.
It's reasoning like this, and the one that you quoted below about
stereotypes, kept me from pursuing a degree in computer science. I
remember looking into the school when I was a young undergrad and I felt
so intimidated, and then was told that I'd have to take certain math
classes. Which frustrated me, as I could do basic language coding and
write html off the top of my head. I flunked the math classes I had to
take, and 10 years later found out I had a math disability. (And it
wasn't my parents who were telling me not to do it, it was professors,
etc. Regardless of my poor math skills, almost every single person I
know who codes jokes that "you don't /need/ to know math." Someday
I'll
take some classes in something (just for fun, I suppose)..or perhaps
there will be a "N00bs super simple MediaWiki fun day that even your
grandma could learn to code at!" event.
The perpetuation of these stereotypes is often geographical, as in Israel,
for
example, many female high school students graduate with 5 points of maths,
5 points of physics, and other such "Realistic Sciences"-oriented subjects,
and when my sister studied in the Technion (
http://www.technion.ac.il/ ),
which was close to when I graduated, there were 30% of female students
studying
Computer Science there. That put aside, I studied Electrical Engineering
(which
in the Technion can easily end up as something close to what Americans
know as
Computer Engineering[1]), where only 10% of the students were female, and
it's most likely due to a low percentage of female students who applied
there.
In any case, there is no good reason to propagate these stereotypes, or for
girls and women to feel intimidated from studying maths. Like you, I also
feel
that you don't need too much mathematics for most of the daily work
involving
programming, but it does crop up in various contexts in computer science. I
wouldn't encourage completely getting rid of mathematics from the CS
curriculums (or even from software engineering ones) because then we end up
with a similar syndrome to what is described here:
http://xkcd.com/547/
We can still teach programming to people without a good knowledge of
maths, and many children (or pre-teens or teenagers or whatever you wish to
call them) have been studying programming before they even studied Algebra.
<footnotes>
[1] - one should note that in the Technion, Computer Engineering is a
combined
Electrical Engineering/Computer Science specialisation, which is more
demanding than either degree, so an Electrical Engineering proper graduate
is
not allowed to say he has a degree in Computer Engineering, but this is a
different (and somewhat sad) story.
</footnotes>
I'm not disappointed with how my path curved
and turned thus far, but,
after reading /Unlocking the Clubhouse/[1] and every time I read an
article like this, it just reminds me more and more of the experiences I
had as a young person that kept me out of the lab. The odd thing, is
that I ended up entering into a field that is upwards of 80% dominated
by women. I wonder of computer science can take any cues from museum
studies.
On that note, I'm sure I'm not the only person on this mailing list that
took a different path than the one they wanted due to popular and
personal pressure.
Well, as a teenager, I planned on becoming a mathematician (I had somewhat
different interests as a younger child). Then after high school I got a few
jobs as a software developer, and decided to study something related.
After a
failed attempt at studying Mathematics and Computer Science in tau.ac.il(I
freaked out completely, due to silly misconceptions), I worked for a few
months in a different workplace and then started studying Electrical
Engineering (like I said, more like what Americans call "Computer
Engineering") there, while being more mentally prepared for that, and
after a
bumpy and eventful ride, graduated. Even in the Technion, there were
several
things I initially wanted to specialise in, which I didn't because they
seemed
too intimidating, counter-intuitive (at least for me) and/or difficult (I
still have a trauma from Maxwell’s Equations).
I've contemplated getting a post-graduate degree, but I've been thinking of
getting one in Linguistics instead of in something more technical. However,
I'm a little afraid of needing to cram a lot of Latin and/or Greek
vocabulary.
Regards,
Mr. Shlomi Fish (sorry for the brain-dump).
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish
http://www.shlomifish.org/
Escape from GNU Autohell -
http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/autohell/
*shlomif:* hack, hack, hack ; save ; make ; make test; commit. And start
over.
*mrjink:*hack, hack, hack; save; make; swear; fix typos; save; make; make
test; swear some more; hack some more; save; make; make test; cheer;
commit.
*meep:* hack, make, test, segfault, oh noes, revert to previous revision
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