Re: [FRIAM] We need your help! Support NM teachers to learn to teach CS.

[Paige Prescott]

If anyone wants to learn more about what we at CSTA-NM are up to in terms
of CS education in NM, please reach out.
Here’s the link to the professional development week- nmcspdweek.com
Thanks,
Paige
paigeapresc...@gmail.com

On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 11:18 AM Stephen Guerin 
wrote:

> Please consider supporting Paige and CS education in New Mexico!
>
> -- Forwarded message -
> From: Irene Lee 
>
> Dear CS education supporter and friend of Project GUTS, GUTS y GIrls, and
> NM-CSforALL,
>
> I'm writing to you because you've generously helped me support and prepare
> NM teachers and students in the past (with your time and efforts).
>
> This time I'm writing to ask you for money!  I've been cheering Paige
> Prescott and CSTA-NM on while they make a big push to prepare NM teachers
> to offer CS activities and classes within communities through out New
> Mexico.  She has been VERY successful in recruiting teachers to attend a
> one week NM CS PD Week planned for June 4-8, 2018 in Albuquerque.
>
> There are now over 200 teacher applicants with many of the teachers
> hailing from communities we have not been able to reach in the past!  The
> waiting list includes teachers from Alamogordo Public Schools, Belen
> Consolidated, Gallup McKinley County Schools, Rio Rancho Public Schools,
> Texico Municipal Schools, Zuni Public School District, Moriarty Edgewood
> School District, Taos Municipal, Roswell ISD, Aztec NM, and Gadsden
> independent school district.
>
> The original 120 slots have been filled and we are fundraising now to be
> able to accommodate the 80 additional applicants.  If you'd like to support
> a teacher to attend NM CS PD Week, please make a donation (in any amount) at
>
> https://www.gofundme.com/NMCSforTeachers
>
> Best, (and please feel free to circulate this with others who might be in
> a position to help support a teacher,)
> --
> Irene Lee
> Director, Project GUTS
> Research scientist, MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program / Education
> Arcade
> --
> ___
> stephen.gue...@simtable.com 
> CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com
> 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505
> office: (505)995-0206 mobile: (505)577-5828
> twitter: @simtable
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

-- 
*Paige Prescott*
CSTA-NM  President
UNM OILS  PhD student
Code.org  Facilitator

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Edward Angel]

Both the Lena image and the Utah Teapot have their own wikipedia pages.

I was working with the image processing group at USC when they started using  
the Lena image as their standard test image. Before that they had been using 
what they all called the “girl image” which was probably from the 50’s and had 
a resolution of around 256 x 256 so it was pretty limited. There were no women 
working in what was a very large research group so I doubt there was any 
protest over the use of the Playboy centerfold. At that time it was not easy to 
find good images to test compression algorithms with. 

The Utah teapot was created by Martin Newell at Utah from his wife’s teapot. It 
was very nice because it could be described by 32 smooth bicubic spline patches 
and was used everywhere for a long time to test rendering algorithms. It’s not 
used much anymore as people use much larger data sets and there isn’t as much 
interest in splines since you now render tens of millions of animated triangles 
in real time.

The really great story about standard data sets (but not on wikipedia) is the 
3D data set of a lobster. It was created from a CT scan of dead lobster. I 
heard a talk by the guy who did it. He had to sneak into the medical scanner 
room in a hospital where he was working at night to do it. It took multiple 
days at the end of which the lobster really reeked and was losing body parts 
(which is noticeable in the reconstruction). My student, Pat Crossno, did the 
3D reconstruction with a particle system that sought out body parts and then 
distributed the particles across the surfaces.

Ed
___

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel 


> On Feb 25, 2018, at 11:28 AM, Steven A Smith  wrote:
> 
> I appreciate and second Ed's observaions here.  While my own role as an 
> instructor during this period was very limited.   I was first a student 
> *among* CS majors (I was a Physics/Math major with a CS minor) in the 70's 
> when it was all pretty new by some measure and the participation by women was 
> higher than in the more physical engineering and science disciplines (ME/EE 
> and Physics/Chemistry) which I generally attribute to the socialization of 
> girls against manipulating the natural world as aggressively as boys (i.e. 
> playing with sticks and stones outside), but might *also* reflect the 
> possibility that males DO have a *different* sense of 3D spatial relations 
> and possibly even materials than females.
> 
> As for Lena... I think the fact that *she* was selected in the first place by 
> the male eye, and her recurrence in the "industry" was probably almost 
> exclusively a male propagation for what I would call "obvious" reasons (and 
> Glen might argue against that).   I think Lena's pervasive image might have 
> been a symbol of the "maleness" of CS in general and Image Processing in 
> particular and THAT might have inhibited some women at a very subtle level, 
> recognizing that the other (male) students might objectify them a bit.  Of 
> course one could make a MUCH stronger argument in this regard for any of the 
> Sports fields and perhaps some subset of "Sports Journalism"?
> 
> One might want to infer something about the ubiquity of the Teapot in the 
> field of Computer Graphics... Ed can probably reference how it got started 
> (who made the first Teapot as a 3D model?) and why it got re-used so 
> ubiquitously... sort of the "Hello World" of CG.   But probably nothing about 
> culinary arts or kitchens or even the British love of Tea is likely to be 
> significant.
> 
> - Stve
> 
> On 2/24/18 6:57 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
>> I found the email with David’s question for me re the Lena image.
>> 
>> I don’t think the Lena image had anything significant to do with the decline 
>> in the percentage of women going into CS. It was a very limited group of 
>> people that actually dealt with or even saw the image. And they were almost 
>> all male.
>> 
>> When I was chair of the CS dept at UNM (1985-88) about 40% of the majors 
>> were women. Two other factors were much more responsible for the decline 
>> that started around then First, pre the mid 80’s, women saw CS as closer to 
>> Math but a major that led to jobs. However, they found that CS was more like 
>> Engineering (or was becoming more like Engineering), a field which for 
>> various reasons was not appealing to women or welcoming of them. Second, 
>> more and more students were attracted to CS because they they were computer 
>> game players. They were almost 100% male, aggressive, individualistic and 
>> often obnoxious, all characteristics that were 

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

I appreciate and second Ed's observaions here.  While my own role as an
instructor during this period was very limited.   I was first a student
*among* CS majors (I was a Physics/Math major with a CS minor) in the
70's when it was all pretty new by some measure and the participation by
women was higher than in the more physical engineering and science
disciplines (ME/EE and Physics/Chemistry) which I generally attribute to
the socialization of girls against manipulating the natural world as
aggressively as boys (i.e. playing with sticks and stones outside), but
might *also* reflect the possibility that males DO have a *different*
sense of 3D spatial relations and possibly even materials than females.

As for Lena... I think the fact that *she* was selected in the first
place by the male eye, and her recurrence in the "industry" was probably
almost exclusively a male propagation for what I would call "obvious"
reasons (and Glen might argue against that).   I think Lena's pervasive
image might have been a symbol of the "maleness" of CS in general and
Image Processing in particular and THAT might have inhibited some women
at a very subtle level, recognizing that the other (male) students might
objectify them a bit.  Of course one could make a MUCH stronger argument
in this regard for any of the Sports fields and perhaps some subset of
"Sports Journalism"?

One might want to infer something about the ubiquity of the Teapot in
the field of Computer Graphics... Ed can probably reference how it got
started (who made the first Teapot as a 3D model?) and why it got
re-used so ubiquitously... sort of the "Hello World" of CG.   But
probably nothing about culinary arts or kitchens or even the British
love of Tea is likely to be significant.

- Stve


On 2/24/18 6:57 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I found the email with David’s question for me re the Lena image.
>
> I don’t think the Lena image had anything significant to do with the
> decline in the percentage of women going into CS. It was a very
> limited group of people that actually dealt with or even saw the
> image. And they were almost all male.
>
> When I was chair of the CS dept at UNM (1985-88) about 40% of the
> majors were women. Two other factors were much more responsible for
> the decline that started around then First, pre the mid 80’s, women
> saw CS as closer to Math but a major that led to jobs. However, they
> found that CS was more like Engineering (or was becoming more like
> Engineering), a field which for various reasons was not appealing to
> women or welcoming of them. Second, more and more students were
> attracted to CS because they they were computer game players. They
> were almost 100% male, aggressive, individualistic and often
> obnoxious, all characteristics that were not those that women students
> possessed (to their credit). Consequently, beginning programming
> classes were terrible experiences for many women students and they
> left the program With the faculty almost all male and comprised of
> people who had been rewarded for precisely these characteristics,
> there wasn’t much effort to change to make the program more attractive
> to women. Eventually CS at UNM changed and now has a healthy
> percentage of women students and faculty.
>
> Ed
> ___
>
> Ed Angel
>
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
> 
>
>> On Feb 16, 2018, at 10:41 AM, Prof David West > > wrote:
>>
>> Some questions for Nick and one for Ed Angel
>>
>> Peterson's "alpha male" silliness seemed to have prompted this thread
>> but I wonder if a different example might advance the discussion more
>> productively, especially since, I suspect, most everyone on the list
>> would dismiss Peterson as inane.
>>
>> The example I have in mind is sexism in computing. Back in the
>> sixties, two psychologists (Cannon and Perry) created a "profile" or
>> aptitude test to determine who would be a good programmer. Their work
>> became the de facto standard used for hiring (and to a lesser extent
>> for admission to grad school in CS) up to and including today.
>>
>> Two psychological / behavioral traits dominate their profile: 1)
>> affinity for and proficiency at 'logical / mathematical puzzle
>> solving';and 2) antipathy towards people. Both of these traits are,
>> supposedly, more prevalent in males than females, especially the
>> second one. This instantly marginalized women as potential
>> programmers. (I would argue that this work also had significant
>> impact, indirectly and via cultural diffusion, on the reduction of
>> women in all of the STEM educational paths and professions.)
>>
>> Within the last 

[FRIAM] We need your help! Support NM teachers to learn to teach CS.

[Stephen Guerin]

Please consider supporting Paige and CS education in New Mexico!

-- Forwarded message -
From: Irene Lee 

Dear CS education supporter and friend of Project GUTS, GUTS y GIrls, and
NM-CSforALL,

I'm writing to you because you've generously helped me support and prepare
NM teachers and students in the past (with your time and efforts).

This time I'm writing to ask you for money!  I've been cheering Paige
Prescott and CSTA-NM on while they make a big push to prepare NM teachers
to offer CS activities and classes within communities through out New
Mexico.  She has been VERY successful in recruiting teachers to attend a
one week NM CS PD Week planned for June 4-8, 2018 in Albuquerque.

There are now over 200 teacher applicants with many of the teachers hailing
from communities we have not been able to reach in the past!  The waiting
list includes teachers from Alamogordo Public Schools, Belen Consolidated,
Gallup McKinley County Schools, Rio Rancho Public Schools, Texico Municipal
Schools, Zuni Public School District, Moriarty Edgewood School District,
Taos Municipal, Roswell ISD, Aztec NM, and Gadsden independent school
district.

The original 120 slots have been filled and we are fundraising now to be
able to accommodate the 80 additional applicants.  If you'd like to support
a teacher to attend NM CS PD Week, please make a donation (in any amount) at

https://www.gofundme.com/NMCSforTeachers

Best, (and please feel free to circulate this with others who might be in a
position to help support a teacher,)
--
Irene Lee
Director, Project GUTS
Research scientist, MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program / Education
Arcade
-- 
___
stephen.gue...@simtable.com 
CEO, Simtable  http://www.simtable.com
1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505
office: (505)995-0206 mobile: (505)577-5828
twitter: @simtable

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove