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CSE 390HA - 142 Honors Seminar

Instructor: Hunter Schafer (hschafer [at] cs [dot] washington [dot] edu)

Welcome to CSE 390HA, the Honors section for CSE 122!

Each week, we will discuss various topics related to computer science. Our sessions will mostly relate to the societal and cultural impacts of technology and CS, and some exploration of some technical concepts. This course is NOT an opportunity to learn more programming or add more "rigor" to 122, nor is any background or familiarity with computer science required outside of what is necessary for CSE 122. This is an opportunity to think about computer science and other related topics in a broader context.

Required Book: Weapons of Math Destruction

Author: Cathy O'Neil

Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard and worked as a math professor at Barnard College before switching over to the private sector, working as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and as a data scientist in the New York start-up scene. She is a regular contributor to Bloomberg Opinion and in 2016 wrote the book Weapons of Math Destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. She is the CEO of ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company, is a member of the Public Interest Tech Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her new book The Shame Machine: who profits in the new age of humiliation came out in March 2022.

Some Purchasing Options: Third Place Books, Powell's Books, Amazon

Please contact Hunter if you are have concerns about getting a copy of this book.

Credit

This is a 1-credit, discussion-based course. To earn credit for this course, you need to "complete" 7 weeks of discussion activities and the culminating activity. New: Everyone earned 1 free week from our cancelled class on Week 6. So effectively this means you only need to attend 6 weeks

To "complete" a weekly discussion activity , you need to 1) do the assigned reading 2) do any assigned activities (requires some effort for completion) and 3) attend the discussion for that week (if you finish all the tasks and attend for a week, it's "completed"). There are 9 weeks that we will be meeting so that means you are able to miss 2 and still receive credit for the class!

Details about the culminating activity will be posted towards the end of the quarter. It will involve researching and writing a paper on a new topic based on our discussions throughout the quarter.

The readings and activities for this class are not meant to take up a lot of time and you are not being tested on your understanding of the material. The exercises are there to get you thinking about computer science, how you can apply it to your own areas of interest, and how it impacts your day to day life.

Meetings

Our class meets on Tuesdays from 3:30 pm - 4:50 pm in LOW 102.

Course Content

Date Info
10/4

In this section, we will all meet and get to know each other and have a broad overview of what we want the discussion to look like this quarter. We discussed the high level goals of this course:

  • To explore the impact of technology and computer science concepts on society
  • To explore computer science and its applications as an academic field
  • To preview what a career as a professional computer programmer or researcher is like
  • To look more in-depth at how we apply computational thinking to our daily lives

We emphasized that 122 is about how to program computers while computer science (and computational/algorithmic thinking) is a much large scope than just programming. As a group, we discussed:

  • What computer science even is
  • What computers can and can't do
  • A brief intro to some sub-fields of CS and their potential impacts on society.
Intersting Links

Assignment Due Today:

  • None! Just show up and it will count for attendance!

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

  • Read the introduction and Chapters 1 & 2 (can skim the specifics of the housing market crash)
  • Fill out the reading reflection here
10/11

In this section, we will discuss the introductory chapter and the first two chapters of the book. We will discuss what models are and the author's definition of a WMD. We will look into various tools/models we work with every day to spot any potential WMDs there.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

  • Read the introduction and Chapters 1 & 2 (can skim the specifics of the housing market crash)
  • Fill out the reading reflection.

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

  • Read the Chapters 3
  • Fill out the reflection link here.
10/18

In this section, we will discuss the U.S. News College Rankings from Chapter 3 of the book. We talked about many of the specific problems brought up in the chapter, and tried to come up with ways around them.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

10/25

In this section, we will discuss online ads and how they impact our privacy. We also talked about how advertisers track you in your day to day life with third-party tracking.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

11/1

In this section, we will discuss the specific details of what this thing called "machine learning" is and a specific type of model called a "decision tree".

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

  • None! No class next week. Everyone will credit a "free" credit for Week 6
11/8

This week was cancelled. Everyone gets a free credit for this week.

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

11/15

This week, we will have a panel of previous UW students who are currently working in various fields related to technology talk about their experience at UW and finding jobs.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

Assignment Due Next Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

11/22

This week, we will have a panel of previous UW students who are currently working in various fields related to technology talk about their experience at UW and finding jobs.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

11/29

In this section, we will discuss impacts of modeling in the criminal justice system and how we can try to define fairness from a modeling approach.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

Assignment Due Next Tuesday @ 3:00 pm:

12/6

This week, we will discuss our final WMDs of the quarter when it comes to the office and we will wrap up some things we learned.

Assignment Due Today @ 3:00 pm:

For this class, we will use Google Forms that require UW authentication to access. If you are having trouble accessing these forms, try to follow the instructions here.

12/16

The last requirement for earning credit for the class is earning credit for the final paper. You can read more about the final paper and submit it here.

Due: Friday, December 13 @ 11:59 pm. No late submissions

Submit: Canvas