Google will even hire an Archaeologist!

…But not just any archaeologist. The archaeologist needs to know something about Bayesian statistics,  analytics and programming. Check out a recent article from the New York Times,

For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics

One quote in the NYT article stands out:

“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”

The statistics referred to by Varian his not just POS (plain old statistics). He is referring to inferential statistics, predictive modeling and machine learning algorithms. In computer science, these are referred to collectively as a branch of Artificial Intelligence.

Where can students go when the United States to understand how to position themselves to be competitive in a data-rich society?  They can come to the College of Charleston and major in Discovery Informatics or Computer Science. Discovery informatics includes the knowledge and skill set that that archaeologist, Carrie Grimes, needed to know to land that job at Google in Mountain View.

In addition, the computer science faculty at the College of Charleston continue to work on another, new and innovative degree program called Business Informatics. Business Informatics will emphasize business analytics, social network analysis and the technologies that support  these areas, which include XML technologies, scripting, Web services, service oriented architecture, and business process modeling.

So whoever your roommates are, clue them in before it’s too late! If they are creative, like to work with people and love to solve problems, then they can prepare themselves for an amazing career with an education in computing, computational thinking or discovery informatics at the College of Charleston.   And they can still call themselves an archaeologist for that matter, albeit a digital archaeologist.

I know not everyone is up to the challenge. Jumping into the dynamic and creative fields of computer science and discovery informatics takes energy, creativity and intelligence. So we don’t expect these high-power majors to be the largest on campus. But that’s okay. We will still need the service-class people, i.e., undergraduate majors who do not understand or use computational concepts and tools, to assist those of us in the creative class, so that we may enjoy the fruits of our labor in the conceptual age.

References:

Richard Florida (service class,  creative class concepts)

Daniel Pink (information age, conceptual age concepts)

AP Computer Science

Is AP Computer Science (APCS) doing anything to broaden participation in computer science? I’ve been thinking about this question lately and even more after reading Mark Guzdial’s Amazon Blog on the topic < http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK1FSG5UQJ2R5MK >.

I used to think of APCS as the solution (in the 1990s) then as a benign anachronism (in the 2000s). I now believe that APCS unnecessarily constrains capable high school computer science teachers in order to prepare students for the exam. I also believe that students in APCS have already self-selected into the discipline thus APCS offers little power to broaden participation. So I respectfully disagree with Dr. Guzdial. Offering APCS in more high schools may only broaden participation linearly at best. 

As chair of a computer science department, I relish new freshmen with APCS coursework, don’t get me wrong, but the value is in the experience not the exam or the transfer credit. Engaging and motivating students in the 8th and 9th grades through computer science courses built around problem contexts, multiple disciplines and current technologies may do more to broaden participation than all of the APCS we could ever offer.

To that end, a group of computer scientists in South Carolina are working together to broaden computing experiences in public and private high schools. We aim to excite students about computer science through a more relevant and broader exposure to computing principles (Peter Denning) and computational thinking (Jeannette Wing). APCS will be promoted too, but without constraining resources or the political will to do so much more for our students than we are doing today with APC

Chris Starr

Why did you pick a computer science major?

This month, thousands of high school students across South Carolina are agonizing over which college to attend in Fall 09. In addition to the CofC many of these students have also been accepted to S. Carolina, Clemson, Elon, UNC Chapel Hill, Furman, and many others. What advice would you give to a high school student about computer science at the College?

- Chris Starr

Open Source in Capstone Course

Computer science faculty members and students continue to contribute to open source projects. A long series of open source experiences have involved students, starting in the previous century with the Mozilla Calendar project under the direction of Dr. Paul Buhler. Since then, three additional open source projects have links to computer science at the College of Charleston include CIRDLES, under the direction of Dr. Jim Bowring, Blobber, led by Brian Muller with involvement of Dr. Semmy Purewal and many others in CSCLUG.org, CLforJava, under the direction of Prof. Jerry Boetje and some new Pecha Kucha social software by Semmy Purewal and Clay McCauley (soon to be released). All but the Mozilla project originated at the College or have roots here through one or more developers.

Do students appreciate the value  of working on a relatively large, multi-year software project that involves a sizable code base, version control, bug reporting, coder reading, teamwork, and a suite of other software engineering tools and processes? Is the open source experience contributing a valued learning experience for undergraduates in Computer Science at the CofC? 

Note: March 2009 is CLforJava month, in celebration of the contributions of more than 150 CofC, computer science majors to the implementation of Common List in Java. Prof. Boetje plans to release CLforJava at the 2009 International LISP Conference under an open source license.

(cons ‘This (cons ‘is (cons ‘the (50th anniversary of LISP))))

-Chris Starr