Briefly
Consider joining us this spring for
CS35, i.e., "CS5, part 2"!
More thoroughly
In the spring and summer of 2025, we again
invite students
to join a rapidly-evolving CS course, variously titled "CS for Inquiry"
and "CS for Insight". We're
especially looking for people who'd be interested in helping experience - and
refine - the long-term vision for the course.
Our motivation is to develop and practice "investigative computing" skills.
For us, "investigative computing" means creating small prototype programs that (1) use data, simulations, and/or other computing to gain insight -- especially insight in fields other than CS; and (2) develop capabilities/confidence with the resources -- AI and LLMs, in particular -- and the many libraries -- including the pandas ecosystem and several systems-level libraries -- that support such investigations.
It's decidedly not software engineering; perhaps we could call it "scripting with savvy"?
We'll use Python (hence the cs5 prerequisite) and will introduce/reinforce several Python libraries, e.g., for traversing filesystems, traversing strings (regexes), for making API calls, using OpenAI's API and its many siblings, the numpy/pandas/scikit-learn team, and lots of others. We'll practice getting comfortable with large, unfamiliar libraries in the process of investigating problems. The latter part of the course will include an open-ended "investigative" computing project of each student's or team's choice. Overlaps with thesis/research work or other efforts are welcome.
Pairing on coursework and projects will be strongly encouraged. One very concrete goal is that, through the course, every student create an narrative portfolio of their work. The most important computational skill of the 2030's is demonstrating and describing artifacts you created, with context sufficient to evolve them into something newly useful, newly insightful, and/or newly inspiring. This class practices that skill.
All majors and class years of 5C students are welcome. (Alas, cs35 does not usually fit into first-year core schedules.) We plan on having at least 42 seats available. Classes include presentation meetings once a week and lots of opportunity for labs/hands-on experimentation/work sessions. The upcoming class will be taught by Prof. Dodds. (We look forward to co-founder Prof. Medero rejoining in the future!)
Join us!
We have a number of early drafts, proposals, and documents related to this course. We include them here for reference.
Please do keep in mind that the course is evolving -- and will evolve most as we learn what's worthwhile through each offering.
These early-draft plans show just how much the community's computational expectations have changed in the past decade.
Join us and
help shape what should be part of all undergraduates' computing experiences!