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Women in computer science


Gary Rubin

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This is potentially interesting.

I don't think that geeks are limited to driving away just girls but all non-geeks.

[set boasting mode = true]

My wife...

Was called Bit-brain as an undergrad ...

Got an A in Fortran and Cobol...

Her role model was Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper ...

Earner her masters in IS at 23 ...

Can normalize a data base while standing up ...

wears a tee-shirt that reads

"GEEKS are HOT"

[set bosting mode = false]

So I don't think it is limited to only women.

I think it could be attributed to language though. THink of it. You have a choice of sitting with people that speak your language and another group that does not. Unless they are willing to teach you the other language, you may find it boring listiening to the forign tongue. Dilbert makes a living of of "dork-speak" jokes.

Ben

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This is potentially interesting.

I personally find it more than "potentially" interesting. tongue.gif

As the parent of a 13 year old daughter, I find it, and the accompanying article

http://www.livescience.com/health/070827_girls_math.html

fairly disturbing. My daughter is quite smart (not just bragging here -- she's in all honors or gifted/talented classes and gets straight A's) and has always shown an interest in science. But I've seen it decreasing over the past couple years. Maybe I'll print out these articles and talk about them with her.

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I personally find it more than "potentially" interesting. tongue.gif

As the parent of a 13 year old daughter, I find it, and the accompanying article

http://www.livescien...girls_math.html

fairly disturbing. My daughter is quite smart (not just bragging here -- she's in all honors or gifted/talented classes and gets straight A's) and has always shown an interest in science. But I've seen it decreasing over the past couple years. Maybe I'll print out these articles and talk about them with her.

On a somewhat related note, I did that science talk for my daughter's kindergarten class. When I asked if anyone knows what a scientist does, I got 3 answers:

1) Tries to learn about things by studying them

2) Makes potions

3) Mixes things together and makes explosions.

I'll bet that the kid who provided answer 3) got her information from watching cartoons.

Edited by Gary Rubin
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Women do not belong in Computer Science. nono.gif

.....

JUST KIDDING, DONT KILL ME!!!!!

tongue.gif

I understand you are just kidding but think about what computers would be like without women...

we would still be prgramming in 1's and 0's and we would all be able to to binary math in our heads to calculate the magnitude of the next jump and choose an operation that has a parameter with enough bits to make the jump...

Ben

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I understand you are just kidding but think about what computers would be like without women...

we would still be prgramming in 1's and 0's and we would all be able to to binary math in our heads to calculate the magnitude of the next jump and choose an operation that has a parameter with enough bits to make the jump...

Ben

I'm not sure where you got your sources for this information but I'll believe it.

<Wife Bragging>

My wife is a nerd, and every time she rattles off some random piece of information that I said and figured she wasn't listen to, I realize why I married her.

There was one day we were just watching TV and she asked if we could watch Star Wars. Neither of us are big Star Wars fans, I think she's seen them a few times. Another day she asked questions regarding video game modding, and another we had a technical discussion about web page design using PHP.

</Wife Bragging>

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I'm not sure where you got your sources for this information but I'll believe it.

Grace Hopper

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Grace_Hopper

was the one who came up with the idea of a compiler that would translate human readable code to machine language. She invented COBOL. Prior to her idea it was one's and zeros.

Ben

You could go back even further:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

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A few years ago this was circulating around:

http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

I scored embarrasingly high on it, much to the amusement of my fellow geeky cow-orkers. So far only my uber-geeky godson has beat my score and that's because he know all the gaming stuff that I don't.

Back then you got 10 extra points just for being female. I haven't looked over the latest version to see if that's still true.

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A few years ago this was circulating around:

http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

I scored embarrasingly high on it, much to the amusement of my fellow geeky cow-orkers. So far only my uber-geeky godson has beat my score and that's because he know all the gaming stuff that I don't.

Back then you got 10 extra points just for being female. I haven't looked over the latest version to see if that's still true.

28.20513% - Total Geek. Not so bad.

And yeah, there's 5 checkboxes at the end if you're female.

Cow-orkers, you say? Sounds delicious.

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A few years ago this was circulating around:

http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

I scored embarrasingly high on it, much to the amusement of my fellow geeky cow-orkers. So far only my uber-geeky godson has beat my score and that's because he know all the gaming stuff that I don't.

Back then you got 10 extra points just for being female. I haven't looked over the latest version to see if that's still true.

If that is the same one from a couple of years ago...

I scored as an extereme geek but Jim Kring reported being a Geek God.

Ben

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Grace Hopper

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Grace_Hopper

was the one who came up with the idea of a compiler that would translate human readable code to machine language. She invented COBOL. Prior to her idea it was one's and zeros.

Ben

Wow, didn't know about her until now. What we learned in school in China was MADAME CURIE, that was very impressive and motivated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie

Irene

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Grace Hopper

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Grace_Hopper

was the one who came up with the idea of a compiler that would translate human readable code to machine language. She invented COBOL. Prior to her idea it was one's and zeros.

Ben

Not to discredit her (or anyone elses work) but that's like saying without men there would never have been light bulbs. Implying of course that Thomas Edison is the only person who could have created the light bulb. Given enough time I would like to believe that a women would have invented the light bulb, and possibly a man to come up with the idea of a compiler...of course without men I guess the human race would die off and no one would have invented the light bulb.

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Not to discredit her (or anyone elses work) but that's like saying without men there would never have been light bulbs. Implying of course that Thomas Edison is the only person who could have created the light bulb. Given enough time I would like to believe that a women would have invented the light bulb, and possibly a man to come up with the idea of a compiler...of course without men I guess the human race would die off and no one would have invented the light bulb.

Yes but...rolleyes.gif

would it have happened by now? Who can tell.

If we look at the state of physics prior to Einstien the general thought was "Well we know everything now so what's next?" Einstien had the same set of facts in front of him but it was him that had the idea and shared it with us. For my part I'll attribute the light bulb going on

lightbulb.gif

in her head as the reason we have compilers now.

Ben

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Implying of course that Thomas Edison is the only person who could have created the light bulb.

Not that I'm trying to hijack the thread or anything, but Joseph W. Swan invented the lightbulb, Edison just made Swan's invention more practical:

http://www.ideafinde...s/lightbulb.htm

I think the legend of Edison is larger than the man on several fronts - just ask Nikola Tesla smile.gif

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... just ask Nikola Tesla smile.gif

And now that you brought up Tesla...

Monday I was delivering an upgraded app that had to using a resolver to monitor to rotaion of a shaft. The customer (being young) never learned about resolvers and mentioned "I'd don't know how they work, there just seems to be a bunch of wire in there." If Tesla was not the person that invented resolvers, he would have loved the idea.

Ben

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Not that I'm trying to hijack the thread or anything, but Joseph W. Swan invented the lightbulb, Edison just made Swan's invention more practical:

http://www.ideafinde...s/lightbulb.htm

I think the legend of Edison is larger than the man on several fronts - just ask Nikola Tesla smile.gif

I know Edison didn't invent the light bulb, I choose that analogy in particular figuring someone would pick up on it. And it was my better half who did..."better half" I have to come up with a better articulation for that.

I am a big fan of Tesla, especially the documentary I saw on him and his most controversal invention...his cloner.

(the movie is not a documentary, it is a joke he never made a cloner...or did he...no, no he did, but maybe...)

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I'm feeling a little better about this today...

Last night my daughter was wading thru vocabulary words (did I have to know how to use "indefatigable" in a sentence in 8th grade?). I asked to hear the sentences she had come up with so far. One of her words was "maxim". She said, "The only thing I could come up with was, 'The Vulcan maxim is "Live long and prosper."'"

That's my girl!

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