Last week on CSzero: The New York Times on plagiarising code and salaries of CS grads in China, Ireland and the US
Category Archives: Computing
Intern Required for Summer 2017
Update May 15, 2017. This position has been filled. Please keep your eye on this webpage for future opportunities.
Paid summer internship on a funded ACM research project. Location: UCD School of Computer Science, Dublin Ireland.
I am looking for a summer intern to work on a research project funded by a grant from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). This work will begin in the late Spring or early Summer of 2017 and be complete by September 2017.
This research will collect, categorize and analyze the learning outcome statements of CS1 courses across a large, diverse set of institutions. This will provide an answer to the question: What exactly are we expecting our novice programming students to achieve? This will allow the CS education community to decide if, as recent evidence has suggested, we have unrealistic expectations of our CS1 students. If this is indeed the case, the outputs of this research will also provide a starting point for the community to adjust its expectations of novice programmers. This could result in improvements in failure rates, retention, diversity and equity in CS education.
The project will require 8-12 weeks of full-time paid work (depending on hourly commitment). The outputs of this research will aim to be published in a leading ACM journal or conference. The student intern will directly contribute to this effort and will be a co-author on the publication.
The successful student will be well versed in structured web searches and related technologies and be able to develop a website and database to store project outputs. A good work ethic, attention to detail, and written communication skills are required. References from module lecturers or similar will form part of your application.
This is an excellent opportunity for any goal-oriented undergraduate student looking to gain real-world experience on a funded research project and who would like to start or enhance their publication history.
Please contact Dr. Brett Becker for further information including application procedure.
Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students
My colleagues and I have just published a paper in Computer Science Education (Taylor & Francis). The abstract, citation, and link are below:
Effective compiler error message enhancement for novice programming students
Abstract:
Programming is an essential skill that many computing students are expected to master. However, programming can be difficult to learn. Successfully interpreting compiler error messages (CEMs) is crucial for correcting errors and progressing toward success in programming. Yet these messages are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to progress for many novices, with struggling students often exhibiting high frequencies of errors, particularly repeated errors. This paper presents a control/intervention study on the effectiveness of enhancing Java CEMs. Results show that the intervention group experienced reductions in the number of overall errors, errors per student, and several repeated error metrics. These results are important as the effectiveness of CEM enhancement has been recently debated. Further, generalizing these results should be possible at least in part, as the control group is shown to be comparable to those in several studies using Java and other languages.
Citation:
Please see Google Scholar or my publications page.
Or, see the paper on the Taylor & Francis site.
ITiCSE 2016 paper: A New Metric to Quantify Repeated Compiler Errors for Novice Programmers
Becker, B.A., 2016, July. A New Metric to Quantify Repeated Compiler Errors for Novice Programmers. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (pp. 296-301). ACM.
Abstract:
Encountering the same compiler error repeatedly, particularly several times consecutively, has been cited as a strong indicator that a student is struggling with important programming concepts. Despite this, there are relatively few studies which investigate repeated errors in isolation or in much depth. There are also few data-driven metrics for measuring programming performance, and fewer for measuring repeated errors. This paper makes two contributions. First we introduce a new metric to quantify repeated errors, the repeated error density (RED). We compare this to Jadud’s Error Quotient (EQ), the most studied metric, and show that RED has advantages over EQ including being less context dependent, and being useful for short sessions. This allows us to answer two questions posited by Jadud in 2006 that have until now been unanswered. Second, we compare the EQ and RED scores using data from an empirical control/intervention group study involving an editor which enhances compiler error messages. This intervention group has been previously shown to have a reduced overall number of student errors, number of errors per student, and number of repeated student errors per compiler error message. In this research we find a reduction in EQ, providing further evidence that error message enhancement has positive eff ects. In addition we fi nd a signifi cant reduction in RED providing evidence that this metric is valid.
6th Irish Supercomputer List: Irish HPC capacity doubles, new #1, three new Top500-class machines!
In a dramatic shake-up of the Irish High Performance Computing landscape, the 6th Irish Supercomputer List was announced today. The new list features six new machines at positions 1, 2, 3, 8, 20 and 27. The top three machines are Top500-class, currently featuring at positions 357, 453, and 454 on the 47th Top500 list. These three machines combined have a performance of 981 Teraflop/s, nearly 1.5 times the combined power of all 28 machines on the December 2015 list.
The result is a more than doubling of Ireland’s total HPC output. Combined, all machines on the Irish Supercomputer List now have a total processing power of 1.42Petaflop/s (Petaflops).
Additionally, this new power results in Ireland ranking at #2 in the world in terms of number of Top500 systems per capita, and #11 in the world in terms of computing capacity (Rmax) per capita.
With 6 new machines, 7 decommissionings, and 2 upgrades, the June 2016 list experienced a turnover of over half of the December 2015 list.
This list features a number of firsts:
- First time Irish aggregate HPC power exceeds 1 Petaflop
- First time in two years that Ireland has featured on the Top500 list
- First time Ireland has had three machines on the Top500 list since June 2012
- First time with a turnover of over half of the previous list
- First time that aggregate list power has increased by a multiple of the previous power
List highlights:
- Total number of systems: 27
- 6 new installations
- 2 upgraded installations
- 7 decommissionings
- Aggregate performance: 1.42 Petaflops (PFlop/s)
- > 86,000 processor cores
View the full list at www.IrishSupercomputerList.org
CS0: A New Computer Science Education Blog
I have just launched a project I have been meaning to for some time – a blog on Computer Science Education. There are a few other excellent CSED blogs out there which have inspired me to start my own.
I called it CS0 because CS1 refers to the introductory programming course in university computer science education, and I think that computing education needs the rethink that is already underway. Besides the fact that a significant focus of modern computing education is at pre-university, or “pre-CS1” levels, the Computing Education community needs to continue to come up with ways to engage and encourage not just traditional students, but anyone and everyone who wants to learn more about the age we live in.
EpimiRBase: A comprehensive database of microRNA-epilepsy associations
EpimiRBase was established in 2015 in order to provide complete and up-to-date information on all publications relating to microRNA and epilepsy. The fully-searchable database includes information on up- and down-regulated microRNAs in the brain and blood, as well as functional studies, and covers both experimental models and human epilepsy. We hope you find this a useful resource for your research.
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting approximately 65 million people worldwide. It is characterized by recurring seizures; abnormal, synchronous firing of groups of neurons within the brain that disrupt sensory, motor and other brain functions. Although anti-epileptic drugs help control seizures for a majority of patients, about 1 in 3 patients are drug-resistant and there is no cure for epilepsy. Analysis of brain tissue from patients and experimental models suggests there are large-scale changes in gene expression within affected brain regions. Understanding what controls gene expression may open new avenues for treatment or prevention of epilepsy.
MicroRNAs are short non-coding RNAs which function to fine-tune protein levels in all cells. They achieve this mainly by sequence-specific binding to 3’untranslated regions of target mRNA. The result is post-transcriptional interference in gene expression which reduces protein levels either by promoting destabilisation of mRNA or translational repression. Research published since 2010 shows that microRNAs are important regulators of gene expression in epilepsy, altering levels of proteins that control cell death, inflammation, re-wiring of neuronal networks and other cell functions. MicroRNAs have also been identified in the blood after injury to the brain which may serve as biomarkers of epilepsy.
Visit EpimirBase today and please let me know if if you find it useful or have questions.
Fourth Irish Supercomputer List Released
The Fourth Irish Supercomputer List was released this week. This is the first time in the history of the list that there has been no change since the last update. There are several proposed installations that we are anticipating late in 2015 and early in 2016. In the meantime we will be updating some statistics which will be available at www.IrishSupercomputerList.org soon. 
Lots happening in the four national supercomputer lists
There has been a lot happening with the only four known national / regional supercomputer lists lately. Here is a brief on each of the four countries and at the bottom, links to all.
China
Until now the Chinese list has been difficult to find, easier at some times, and at other times it seems to disappear completely. Additionally, attempts to translate it into English with Google translate yielded moderate results at best. However the China list has just been released in an English language version through the Top500 – not hard to find any more! Hopefully this will be a regular happening. See here for more info.
India
India has just announced a $730 million program to bolster its standing as a supercomputing power, which currently isn’t what it used to be. See here for more info.
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States (a regional organisation whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, including the Russian Federation) have had a top 50 supercomputer list since 2004, however I have only recently been made aware of this nice explanation. Their list (below) translates well with Google translate.
Ireland
Back on the Emerald Isle, things have cooled off with list #3 in November 2014, compared to the explosive growth seen between list #1 in November 2013 and list #2 in June 2014. This year, due to ISC 2015 being in July instead of June, the Top500 (and therefore the Irish Supercomputer List which always lags the Top500 by a week) will be released in July.
The Lists:
- Ireland
- Commonwealth of Independent States
- Explanation: http://hpc.msu.ru/?q=node/49
- List: http://top50.supercomputers.ru/?page=rating
- India
- China
- Announcement and List: http://top500.org/blog/chinas-2014-hpc-top100-list-in-english/
Third Irish Supercomputer List Released
The third Irish Supercomputer List was released today, and for the first time we have entrants from Northern Ireland. Queen’s University Belfast has two machines on the list, at positions 13 and 23. University College Dublin also has two new machines including the new Earth Institure’s Gaia at number 15 and the School of Mathematical Science’s Orr2 at position 19. UCD’s Sonic, now on its third recent upgrade and adding almost one TFlop/s of performance remains at position 18.
The combined number of CPU cores over all machines on the current list is over 75,000. The list also shows that Ireland is following a global trend of harnessing coprocessor technologies for HPC. 25% of the machines on the list make use of coprocessors, with a combined total of over 106,000 coprocessor cores. The combined performance of all machines is 648 Tflops/s.
The full list is here.