Neither rocket science nor washing machine science

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Neither rocket science nor washing machine science
School of Computing FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

• Roger Boyle, roger_at_comp.leeds.ac.uk
• Professor of Computing

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Its early. You were up late. Youre excused in
going to sleep (if youre even here). I will
try too keep you awake.
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A competition
N
A stolen idea or quotation. Match number to
name. The drink of your choice for the
prizewinner.
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Pay attention! This is a lecture.
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Question -
How can I go forward when I don't know which way
I'm facing?
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Backwards/Forwards
For the very young, origins and history are
difficult to reason about. Computer Science is
very young. Or is it?
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Birth
William Bragg Nobel prize (Physics) 1915
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Birth
Professor Sir Gordon Cox to Professor E R Rideal,
Director of the Davy-Faraday laboratory of the
Royal Institution, 1948 ... a good deal of
computation is involved ...
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Birth
Enrico Fermi Nobel prize (Physics) 1938
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La Calcolatrice Elettronica Pisana (Piero
Maestrini)
Fermi writes in 1954 to the Rector of the
University of Pisa
the computer would establish a research
tool for many fields of science and would bring
advantages ...to students and researchers who
would have the chance to experience and train
themselves using these new computational tools.
Fermi died shortly afterward in Chicago.
Foremost physicists recorded the letter as
Fermis last scientific bequest to Italy.
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• Most present entered the game some time after its
  birth

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Adolescence?
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Adolescence

• We had patrician beginnings
• We found our feet. And our identity. We grew
  up..
• We recruited widely and strongly. Our garden was
  rosy.

The Britain that is going to be forged in the
white heat of this technological revolution
Harold Wilson, ex Prime Minister of the UK
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Growing pains?

• Balanced on the biggest wave

we seemed to fall off
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Growing pains?
unprepared for large scale complex IT
projects enrolment crisis. declines
pronounced in computer science. falling
behind in the capacity for discovery, innovation
and development first ever slump
Computer Science is in trouble Computing
Education is in crisis
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The Computer Science fairy-tale?

• We had patrician beginnings
• We found our feet. And our identity. We grew
  up..
• We recruited widely and strongly. Our garden was
  rosy.
• The tide turned. Our garden is not rosy.
• In true fairy-tale tradition, the happy ending is
  just around the corner.

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Fairy tales
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All traditional fairy tales follow the same
format

1. Life is grim
2. Something comes along to improve it
3. There is a relapse, but not to the depths of
   point (1)
4. Everything is resolved. Everyone lives happily
   every after.

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Fairy tales

• (Its rather important to stress that this only
  applies to fairy-tales not Hamlet, Titus Groan,
  etc.)

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Fairy tales

• (Its rather important to stress that this only
  applies to fairy-tales not Hamlet, Titus Groan,
  etc.)

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Fairy tales predestiny
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An axis

• You are here

Good
Bad
Dragons Ugly sisters Unhappy Deans
Happy ever after Prince Charming Happy Deans
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Problems 1

• They dont love us
• any more

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Problems 1
Publications, speakers and conferences passim
discuss this.
But Computing is Boring, Frustrating,
Confusing, Hardware faults, Internet failure,
Difficult, Hard to keep up with,
Nerdy, Antisocial Scottish schoolchildren,
2002 We all await the ITICSE keynote The
magic wand Increasing the number of CS fluent
high school teachers
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Problems 1a

• IT/ICT - Someone is taking our name in vain

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Problems 1a

• We are trying to combat active distraction
  introduced in the nursery.
• This is not a new revelation
• CS4HS, CS4FN, EISS, CCTA,
• We all still await the ITICSE keynote The magic
  wand Increasing the number of CS fluent high
  school teachers

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Problems 2

• Some of them never loved us in the first place.

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Problems 2
Source CRA, May 2005
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Solutions ? 2

• E.g., Computer clubs for girls?

you and your girls could explore how to make a
quiz, a seasonal e-card, an interactive poster, a
CC4G Club homepage or membership card
We all still await the ITICSE keynote The magic
wand Increasing the number of CS fluent high
school teachers
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Solutions ? 2
Leah Buechley, CS at University Colorado See
ITICSE 2007
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Problems 3
Some of them just dont want to know were
here. Whose fault is that?
Me Had you thought about studying at
university? 17yo Nah, Im going to get a job
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Problems 3
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Problems 3
bicycles, skate-boards or roller-blades must
not be used
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Problems 3

• Top universities fail to spend 3m set aside to
  attract poorer students. (The Guardian,
  January 23rd 2008)

• poorer students are being put off applying to
  university for fear of getting into debt and very
  few understand the bursaries on offer
• many do not know if they are eligible for
  bursaries and that only a small minority knew
  where to find information
• exam reforms could disadvantage state school
  pupils

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Problems 3

• http//www.morethanyouthink.com/

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On the other hand, it certainly isnt all bad

• Biocomputing
• Grid computing
• Web science
• Quantum computing

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2008

• data are Big

and data are wild
flickr, youtube, facebook, wikipedia,
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Big data

• Its not just fun to have it drives a lot of
  what we do.
• Students at the University of Washington are
  about to begin a large-scale simulation of a
  future in which you and your items are tracked by
  tiny monitoring devices we know as RFID tags.
  (http//blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/social
  -networks.html)
• Google image labeler. (http//images.google.com/i
  magelabeler/)
• Yahoos flickr tag miner (http//research.yahoo.co
  m/taglines/)
• More data usually beats better algorithms (Anand
  Rajaram, Stanford, March 2008, http//anand.typepa
  d.com/datawocky/2008/03/more-data-usual.html).
• stockpile personal secrets 300000
  people will have access to the NHS database
  (Henry Porter, The Observer 25th November 2007).

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Big data
But we should involve our students in this
directly -
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Whats going on?
There is a context to what we see.
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Whats going on?

• Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants (Prensky)
• used to receiving information really fast
• like to parallel process and multi-task
• prefer their graphics before their text
• prefer random access
• function best when networked
• thrive on instant gratification and frequent
  rewards
• prefer games to serious work.

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Whats going on?
Every computer scientist is a failed something
else Not any more But they are coming from a
different place to us
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The Liquid world / 2nd modernity

• the shrinking of space abolishes the flow of time
• inhabitants live in a perpetual present
• people are constantly busy and perpetually short
  of time
• residents of the first world live in time space
  does not matter for them
• we occupy a world of communication networks in
  which social and physical space have diverged
• social networks are not being added on to the
  national container they are changing its nature
• a society preoccupied with the future with a
  variable trust in industry, government and
  experts
• Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens

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Beyond our Internet
production of useless products for a throwaway
society contacts are hastier and
communication has less depth life is
characterised not by progress, but by a simple
continuation
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• History is more or less bunk. We dont want
  tradition. We want to live in the present and
  the only history that is worth a tinkers damn is
  the history we make today

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ROSE Sjøberg et al., Oslo
The Relevance of Science Education the
predominant zeitgeist has a major influence on
young peoples way of thinking about and
understanding their world society
emphasises values like environment, democracy,
care, self actualisation recruitments to
medicine, biology, environment are not falling
girls often outnumber boys What do you want to
be when youre grown up?
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ROSE Sjoberg et al., Oslo
School science is interesting
Africa Asia S Europe E Europe N
Europe Japan Scandinavia
http//www.ils.uio.no/english/rose/
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ROSE Sjoberg et al., Oslo
I like school science better than most other
subjects
Africa Asia S Europe E Europe N
Europe Japan Scandinavia
http//www.ils.uio.no/english/rose/
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ROSE Sjoberg et al., Oslo
I would like to become a scientist
Africa Asia S Europe E Europe N
Europe Japan Scandinavia
http//www.ils.uio.no/english/rose/
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• Whats going on?

There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes
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We are Computer Science. Meaning?
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nothing new
Communities are bound by intricate socially
constructed webs of belief which are essential to
understanding what they do. (Brown et al. 1989)
The office of the physicist has pictures on the
walls of Einstein and Oppenheimer the
sociologist prefers Durkheim and Weber. (Clark
1983)
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Our culture

• The general public have no problem identifying a
  Computer Scientist ?.
• How would we define ourselves? Vocabulary? Décor?
  

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Our culture

• Culture?
• students are too often asked to use the tools
  of a discipline without being able to adopt its
  culture
• (Brown et al.,1989)
• student do not only learn knowledge in the
  classroom, they learn a set of practices
• (Boaler, 2002)

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Physics

• Durrani M, Physics past present and future,
  Physics World, December, 1999
• What have been the 3 most important discoveries
  in Physics?
• Which 5 physicists have made the most important
  contributions to Physics?
• What is the biggest unsolved problem in your
  field?
• What is the biggest unsolved problem in the rest
  of Physics?
• Would you study physics if you were starting
  university this year?

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Physics

• A physicist's theories are worthless unless he
  can explain them to the barmaid at the local pub.

(Can I do that?) (Can you do that?)
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The CS Pantheon
The reconstruction of scientific development
which focuses on the great men and on the
linear and accumulative sequence of discoveries
represents a distorted picture which coincided
all too neatly with an idealized picture of the
scientific enterprise (Graham et al., 1983)
Unhappy is the land that has no heroes Unhappy is
the land that is in need of heroes
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The CS Pantheon
History is not a progression of great
women. But bear in mind the shadow of Bragg,
Fermi,
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And so

• Issues
• Theres what we were, what we are, and what we
  want to be. This is a progression our students
  should learn. This is a progression with
  which our students should be imbued.
• And then theres what our students are, and what
  they might want to be.
• Are we addressing these?

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What and who we are

• language wars
• objects first/objects last debates
• CS1
• TCP/IP
• are all jolly important, but not (really) the
  problem.
• Consider how we do what we do.

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What and who we are

• Perhaps -
• Teach Programming for Research (in addition to
  Programming)
• Write a blueprint for the 10 minute DVD
  Computing and Telecomms in 2030
• Introduce the relevance of scale
• How many golfballs fit inside a Boeing 747?
• How big is the GoogleEarth disk farm?

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What and who we are
Physics - "Your questions are ridiculous,"
replied one eminent surface scientist. Agonising
about defining who we are is lack of
self-confidence. Are we oldies worried about
being a failed something else?
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Entering the Liquid World
students today are adept at multitasking and
expect to be connected in sophisticated ways any
attempt to circumvent these tendencies will
fail. G Jackson, CIO, University of
Chicago Well have to meet them halfway, at
least.
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Entering Second Modernity

1. Leah Buechleys approach appealed directly to the
   Digital Native
2. Engaging with the Natives lingua franca can be
   fraught. But were already doing it for our own
   purposes and this must be an opportunity.
3. What are you going to do about the backs of
   laptops you lecture to?

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The fairy tale
Good
Bad
0
Happy ever after
Dragons

• The vertical axis wasnt labelled.

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Neither rocket science nor washing machine science
and theres a big future in what we are
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Road to nowhere?
we dont know where we've been we're on a
road to nowhere
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But we do and were not. And thats what we
should be teaching our students so they can
understand the route map in their world
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• This is the end