CSE 142

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Exploration Sessions

Thursdays, 4:30-5:30 in room JHN 102.

Each week we will offer a different opportunity to explore extra topics in computer science with one of our TAs. You will accumulate one "exploration point" for each week that you attend the lecture. At the end of the quarter, your total exploration points will be divided by 3 and will be added to your homework points. There will be approximately 150 homework points total, so this isn't adding a lot to your potential score. As an example, if you were to participate in 3 exploration sessions, you would have 1 point added to your homework points, which is like getting one more point on a weekly programming assignment. The idea is to give people a small reward, but not something that is so large that people feel obligated to participate in these optional sessions.

Please come prepared to listen to and ask questions of the guest speaker. Also, please bring your Husky ID card so that we can verify your attendance.

Week 10: Third-Party Tracking on the Web - Thursday, December 4th from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • Privacy on the web is an important issue these days. For example, when you visit a Web site, your browser doesn't just load content from that website. Mostly invisible to you, your browser also loads "third-party" content from other sources, including advertisements and social media widgets like the Facebook "Like" button. These third parties are able to "track" your visits to those sites and learn about your browsing behaviors. Assistant Professor Franziska Roesner will describe how these trackers work, our study of their behaviors in the wild, and a new defense developed here at University of Washington.

    Guest speaker is Assistant Professor Franziska Roesner.

Week 9: No session -- Thanksgiving

Week 8: Data Visualization - Thursday, November 20 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • As digital information becomes increasingly cheap and ubiquitous, how will we keep abreast with the rising tide of data? Associate Professor Jeff Heer will talk about how humans can digest and visualize the vast quantities of data that we store in our computing systems.

    Guest speaker is Associate Professor Jeff Heer.

Week 7: Ubiquitous Computing - Thursday, November 13 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • UW CSE Professor Shwetak Patel will talk about using computers in new and unexpected places,. He'll talk about current research and start-up companies that use many embedded computers to do things like monitor and reduce energy consumption, and improve the quality of health care.

    Guest speaker is Associate Professor Shwetak Patel.

    Ubicomp lab website: http://ubicomplab.cs.washington.edu/

Week 6: Computability and Complexity - Thursday, November 6 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • What kinds of problems can we solve with computers? Are there problems that computers can't solve? If a problem can be solved, how fast can we solve it? CSE 142 TA Hunter Schafer will be discussing the nature of computation and its limitations through the perspectives of complexity and computability theories. Topics include P vs NP, the importance of Sudoku, and the halting problem.

    Guest speaker is our very own Hunter Schafer, a 3rd quarter 142 TA.

Week 5: Cellular Automata - Thursday, October 30 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • CSE alum Alex Miller will discuss cellular automata. Some label the field of cellular automata as "recreational science". As Alex will discuss, a cellular automaton is no more than a strange sort of game. However, these games turn out to have extraordinary implications in many fields, and some think they can explain the nature of the universe! You will take a close look at some interesting cellular automata and discover why mathematicians and computer scientists are so obsessed with them.

    Guest speaker is Alex Miller, graduate of the UW CSE Computer Science program and current software engineer at Google.

Week 4: Robotics - Thursday, October 23 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • Robots are used in everything from manufacturing to medical science. Come hear a little about what's happening in the UW Robotics lab!

    Guest speaker is Maya Cakmak, an Assistant Professor and researcher in Robotics here at University of Washington.

Week 3: RSA Encryption - Thursday, October 16 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • How do we protect the information that we share on and over the web? In this week's Exploration Session, CSE142 TA Derek Coley will speak about encryption and the math that underlies it. We'll see how some properties of prime numbers and the mod operator enable secure communication, via public key encryption.

Week 2: Binary! - Thursday, October 9 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • Computers can only understand binary, but we write Java, a prgramming language that looks a lot like english. This week we'll talk about how computers represent complex information and instructioons with just 1s and 0s.

Week 1: The Industry (Amazon.com) - Thursday, October 2 from 4:30-5:20 in JHN102

  • Want to hear about what it is like to develop software in the industry? Come hear from a former Amazon.com employee about the day-to-day life of a software engineer. We'll talk about:
    • The types of problems that Amazonians work on
    • Developing software that works at "Amazon scale"
    • Work and life at a large software company
    • Anything else you might have questions about!