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Boanerges Aleman-Meza, Computer Scientist
Computer Scientist at the Department of BioSciences, Rice University
 

Anatomy of a MOOC, Seminar talk by Scott Rixner

March 8th, 2013 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Professor Scott Rixner gave a seminar talk where he summarized his experiences in co-teaching a MOOC (Massively Online Open Course) that was taken by Rice Students in Computer Science and 80,000 other people world-wide (at its peak).

Key points from his talk, in no particular order:

  • It consumed 6-months of his time where it was the only thing he did (70+ hours per week of work was mentioned)
  • Students wrote computer programs online using CodeSkulptor, which provided a unified platform and enabled showing results to any one by just sending a link
  • Discussion forum (in Coursera) was active all the time though only a fraction of people participated (enough for critical mass)
  • Rixner said that he has incorporated things that benefit his regular teaching, such as requiring students to view video and answer graded quiz (at least) 1 hour before class
    • The value of  quizzes in the course grade is super tiny but it is known that Rice students would not want to miss any possible point (or fraction thereof)
  • Lots of feedback was really good and satisfying, minor small feedback was bad and nasty
  • Including some ‘fun’ aspects in the course was key to keep people interested
  • Decline of participation was somewhat linear but a few thousands did complete everything in the course

Posted in talks-or-seminars | 1 Comment »


Joke, programmers’ girlfriend

February 8th, 2013 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Someone told me a joke recently, when I came across Programmer Ryan Gosling, I adapted it as shown in the picture above, which was created via fakeiphonetext website.

Disclaimer: I do not think that there is anything wrong with same gender couples.

Posted in miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


Example of Yahoo’s inneficient advertising

December 6th, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

If you use mail.yahoo.com, you’ll see ads. The advertisement of Mozilla Firefox takes you to download version 17 of Firefox. However, I am opening the website with exactly that version of Firefox. Hence, such ad is useless. Yahoo’s web server should detect that I already have that version of Firefox. It can even be done in Javascript. Advertising Firefox 17 to users using Firefox 17 is simply inefficient.

 

Posted in miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


Java dialog for yes-no question

October 12th, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Java Dialog for giving user option of YES/NO in a GUI, the default is the second option in this case (i.e., the NO). I’d like to quickly find this code when needed, but also important is how the question needs to be made, and the text of each button needs to be worded so that user can better know what each button is going to do.

String[] options = { "Yes, discard changes", "No, go back to where I was" };
int n = JOptionPane.showOptionDialog( dialog, "Changes have not been saved!\nDiscard Changes?",
        "Unsaved changes", JOptionPane.YES_NO_OPTION, JOptionPane.QUESTION_MESSAGE, null, options, options[ 1 ] );
if( n == 0 ) {
dialog.setVisible( false );
}

Maybe I could have proposed in this way, but setting the default to ‘YES’. Fun, but my wife likely wont think it is fun, heheh.

Note: the question has a mistake, it should say “Changes have not been saved”

Extra note: simple html can be used, such as

"<html>Yes,<br>discard changes</html>"

Posted in Java | 1 Comment »


Learning Web Design 4th Edition (Book Review)

October 6th, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Summary: Learning Web Design (4th edition) The book tells you not only how to do stuff, it tells you why and when it is right to do so. Proportionally speaking, if the book were 11 pages, you get 1 page for introduction, 3 for HTML, 5 for CSS and 2 for javascript. The book focuses on the important stuff, and says what is good on each. You can always learn the material online via web search, copying examples, etc, but it will take a while to grasp the ‘why’ of its intended usage.

If you already know some of the material and want a refresher on the latest (such as HTML5), simply go to the ‘test yourself’ section at the end of each chapter. The core of the book is the HTML and CSS content. It nicely explains what it’s new in HTML5.

HTML5: the book tells you what to do for browsers that do not support HTML5. It is to the point in just what you need to know. It includes enough for the video tag but not too much. If you need to go deep into canvas tag, get another book.

CSS: the book gives you strategies for page layout, and covers nice stuff such as round corners, transitions, transformations, animations. Finally I was able to fully understand a number of CSS techniques that I have used in my sites.

JavaScript: the book covers enough to practically know what it is and why you may have to learn it in the future. If you need to go deep in JavaScript, get another book. Lastly, a small chapter on web graphics is what I consider ‘filler’ content for people that know nothing about image formats.

The book is big and pretty, in the same way that you can learn genetics online, we all know that the best is to get a genetics book and read through it. Similarly here, you wont regret getting the hard-copy, it is similar to a traditional college book (definitely less pricey than a genetics book). The reader can be a newbie or skilled person in web page design. Newbie will learn in a ‘clean’ way, the skilled person will refresh/learn how to correctly use HTML5 tags and CSS.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of the book from O’Reilly for review. This review was first posted in Boanerges Aleman-Meza’s blog

Posted in book review | No Comments »


Where to get vitamin C from today?

September 8th, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

I was wondering where should I get my vitamin C intake from. Here are the choices:

And here is the final choice:

I love lime!

Posted in miscellaneous | No Comments »


Upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS

August 31st, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

I upgraded my linux box to Ubuntu 12.04. The upgrade went smoothly, except for a few screens such as the following:

The new version looks great, very nice design, except that the launch-bar is too colorful. Nice work Ubutu !

Posted in miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


Data Analysis with Open Source Tools (Book Review)

August 13th, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Summary: Data Analysis with Open Source Tools is a reference book that explains in detail the many ways to make sense of data. You will find ways to interpret data using statistics, plots, and mathematics. It also covers traditional data mining (simulation, clustering) and fun topics on modeling for making estimates.

You should get this book if your education was below average in statistics and math, or if it was average and you forgot about it already. It is quite good to refresh your memory and to learn interesting stuff that is good to know in case you need it. For example, the time value of money is clearly explained. The author goes in length to warn you of common mistakes in processing data. Every graduate student in a science major should know about the topics covered in this book. That is, read about it once, you will know what it is when someone mentions it (such as k-means), and if needed, go back again to the book for details or pointers for further information.

Once you reach 80% of the book, there are two big appendixes left: one is a refresher on math, the other on additional details on working on data. Throughout, the book has workshops/exercises, but unless you are familiar with Phyton, you might as well skip them (not too big of a loss).

Disclaimer: I was provided a electronic-copy of the book from O’Reilly for review.

Posted in book review | No Comments »


Web Browser evaluation

August 9th, 2012 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

I tested several browsers for a period of two months. At the office in my Windows XP desktop, I would use a different browser every day. Details:

  • Internet Explorer 8: dislike that Ctrl+L does not take me to the address bar. Slow when opening tabs. The yellow bar warning about running add-ons such as Adobe-Flash is annoying. I gave up on this browser after the second week.
  • Google Chrome v21: like the option of saving to PDF. It does not move to other tabs with Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown when inside editor window of WordPress.
  • Mozilla Firefox v14: gives the impression that it wants to update quite frequently. It is great to copy text such as clicking on a word and then using shift+arrow to select adjacent text. Moving to other tabs with Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown always works.
  • Safari v5: zooming in google maps causes screen mess (as if the video card had failed only in this application). It is somewhat slow in the start but I do not see this in my mac. It is great to copy text such as clicking on a word and then using shift+arrow to select adjacent text. It needs an easy way to move to other tabs using keyboard shortcuts.

My preference: Mozilla Firefox.

Ideal browser: Mozilla Firefox with the “print-to-PDF” option.

Posted in miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


Gnuplot scattered plot with circles filled, not filled, with border

November 1st, 2011 by Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Gnuplot can make great scattered plots, including the use of circles instead of just dots. The circles are typically filled, with their radious depending on a numerical value on the data being plotted. In addition, it is also possible to draw a border in the circle using different colors. Here is an example using characters from Grey’s Anatomy TV show.

These are the gnuplot commands to create the scattered plot:

set term jpeg size 700,800
set output 'plot_scattered.jpeg'
set xtics rotate ( "Meredith" 1, "Avery" 2, "Teddy" 3, "Karev" 4, "Bailey" 5, "Burke" 6, "Lexie" 7, "Owen" 8, "Addison" 9, "O'Malley" 10, "Arizona" 11, "Derek" 12, "April" 13, "Sloan" 14, "Izzie" 15, "Webber" 16, "Christina" 17, "Callie" 18 ) scale 0
set ytics ( "Meredith" 1, "Avery" 2, "Teddy" 3, "Karev" 4, "Bailey" 5, "Burke" 6, "Lexie" 7, "Owen" 8, "Addison" 9, "O'Malley" 10, "Arizona" 11, "Derek" 12, "April" 13, "Sloan" 14, "Izzie" 15, "Webber" 16, "Christina" 17, "Callie" 18 ) scale 0
plot [0:19][0:23] "homerun.txt" using 3:5:1 title 'homerun' with circles linecolor rgb "#9ACD32" fill solid noborder \
, "gender.txt" using 3:5:1 title 'homerun same gender' with circles linecolor rgb "#9400D3" lw 3 fill solid border lt 3 \
, "firstbase.txt" using 3:5:1 title 'first-base' with circles linecolor rgb "#A9A9A9" lw 3

These are the text files with the data being plotted: homerun, gender, firstbase.

One great thing about Gnuplot is that it can create SVG files, this is the SVG file of the same plot: svg_file (rename it to .svg instead of .txt so that a web browser can open it).

Posted in miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


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