CPATH CB: Applied Computer Science for the Humanities and Social Sciences

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Computers are becoming essential in all disciplines. Researchers in the social sciences rely on the availability of large data repositories and the general availability of data over the Web. Researchers in the humanities are increasingly looking to analyze the growing number of electronic corpora. Workers in all fields are making use of new ways to publish data and of to interact with colleagues and others using electronic media. Moreover, more and more jobs and companies are relying on the understanding and processing of information. Modern companies as diverse as Google, WalMart, Amazon, and Goldman Sachs all owe their success in large part to their ability to evaluate and act on available information. It is estimated that in the next ten years, over twelve million people in the U.S. workforce will consider programming their primary job, which is far more than the current or near-term number of computer science majors. To address these needs, to better prepare students for careers involving information processing, to preparetomorrow?s researchers in the humanities and social sciences, and to prepare tomorrow?s workers for an information-based world, computer science needs to reach out beyond its traditional audience and even beyond the sciences. This project focuses on disciplines that have traditionallybeen neglected by computer scientists, harnessing the growing revolution in applying computing to social artifacts. Second, it will result in a novel, application-driven, on-demand presentation of computing material, coming to topics like machine-learning and data-mining very early, rather than late, in the curriculum. Third, the development of a curriculum arranged in concentric rings of growing commitment, where a student who stops early will still get a meaningful education. It will provide the proper foundation for the growing use of computing and cyberinfrastructure in the humanities and social sciences. It will ultimately train such students have been relegated to with the tools to make their own non-trivial contributions to cyberinfrastructure. It will result in more women and minorities, groups traditionally underrepresented in computing, working with and using computation and cyberinfrastructure. Finally, it will enable students to wed their deep social and humanistic insights to tools that can enable them to build wonderful inventions that have the power to greatly enrich society.