Tech or Something Else? Why Not Both?

Talking to high school students, one of the most common things I hear is in the form "I really like [STEM field] but I have a passion for [arts/humanities field]."  As in, "I really love science, but I'm really into music" or "I love math, but I really want to study French."  College catalogs and job descriptions conspire to give people the impression that you have to pick just one field, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Technology touches nearly every aspect of society. Everything from advertising to zoo-keeping has benefited from technology.  The innovations that enable game-changing improvements often come from people who have a passion and experience in two or more fields. Combining substantive knowledge in one area with technical know-how creates a very powerful combination.

Have Confidence to Learn by Teaching

JennyxYoung

Lack of confidence is one of the biggest roadblocks to success, especially in STEM fields.  By now, it is well known that Impostor Syndrome, which disproportionately impacts professional women (but affects many men as well), causes the affected to doubt themselves and ultimately under-perform their potential.  Related confidence deficiencies cause women to downplay their successes in performance reviews, not apply for positions unless they are certain they meet 100% of the qualifications, and dwell on any minor shortcoming.  You don't have to get to the workforce for these confidence issues to crop up - they happen in school as well.

In Math is Hard, But So Is Everything Else, I wrote about how it's natural to feel stuck at times.  But how can we get unstuck?  One way is to try to teach someone else the concepts you barely understand.   Doing this requires healthy dose of confidence, but it doesn't require you to actually be an expert. 

Cultural Blind Spots

This excellent article puts into perspective how 'geek culture' can exclude otherwise very capable individuals who do not fit neatly in its bounds. This is one of the forms of subtle bias I commonly refer to - it's not that someone makes a conscious decision to hire only young white men for their tech startup, but it tends to happen anyway.  It's difficult in an interview to identify the kind of spark that makes someone a good engineer - you want to find people with the right mix of technical know-how, creativity, problem-solving skills, and dedication to make great things.  You can test for technical know-how, and references can help determine dedication, but creativity and problem-solving skills are a lot harder to identify.  So it's no surprise that companies come up with questions about superpowers and surviving a zombie apocalypse because they are fun scenarios that can demonstrate creativity and problem-solving skills.  However, these scenarios play off of fiction genres that tend to appeal much more to men than women.  These scenarios aren't relevant to the work in the company (unless the product is related to zombies or superpowers in some way), so tying hiring decisions to these kinds of questions unnecessarily biases hiring against women.

Many women who succeed in heavily male dominated tech fields have adopted the culture - whether out of genuine interest, feigned interest in an attempt to fit in, or cultivating an actual interest upon making an attempt to fit in.  But for many others who have the aptitude and interest in the science and technology of it all, but are unable or unwilling to adapt to the culture, the existence of this culture serves as a barrier to entry.

This is the kind of thing that all of us need to be conscious of - on the hiring side to reflect whether we are inadvertently missing great candidates and on the job-seeking side to make sure we don't get caught in someone else's cultural blind spot.

2^11

Sometimes the best way to learn is to not realize you're learning.  The game 2048 is like that.  The goal is very simple - you combine merge blocks of the same number into one with the combined value.  For example, if you combine two '4' blocks (2^2), you make one '8' block (2^3).  Two '8' blocks make a 16 block (2^4) and so on.  The goal is to create a 2048 block (2^11).  After each move, a block appears randomly somewhere on the board - usually a 2, but sometimes a 4.

This is a very fun and natural way to get comfortable with powers of 2, which is an important concept in computing.  I'm sure the creator of this game did not intend it to be an educational game, but it's just one of the little ways that you can pick up important concepts in unconventional ways.

No, I'm not writing a blog post solely to justify the hours I've wasted playing this game.  Why do you ask?

Targeted Programs and Backlash

The Don't Look Down post explores the message that targeted programs can send to the targets.  In this post, I take on the message that targeted programs send to the non-targeted.  As a reaction to these programs, men can develop resentment and prejudice against women.  Below I discuss this phenomenon, why that belief is a problem for all of us, and what programs I prefer because they don't foster this reaction.

Meeting Our Future Engineers

Last week I had the honor of meeting about a dozen students from my alma mater at a networking event.  They were visiting Washington, DC to get a sense of what engineering is like in the "real world" (if you can call DC the "real world") by spending a day shadowing hosts (including myself) at various government agencies, research labs, and companies.

At the networking reception, I had the opportunity to speak with engineering students in several different programs.  Most of these students are sophomores and are just starting to figure out what they want to do with their lives.  I spoke with one young woman studying mechanical engineering who is interested in designing roller coasters.  One young man studying chemical engineering is trying to decide between going into manufacturing of pharmaceuticals or entering the growing field of natural gas extraction in his home state of Pennsylvania.  One young engineer is on her way to a career defending networks from cyber-attacks, another is looking to use his background to help shape policy.

Talking to these students, I'd have no idea there was a shortage of women engineers.  The group was evenly split between men and women, and all of the students impressed me.  The statistics show we have a lot of work to do still, but it was nice to be in a room of engineers and not be heavily outnumbered.

Pi is for Everyone

Source: Wikipedia

The formulas, jargon, and code in this post may not be the best way to prove that STEM is for everyone, but it's Pi Day, and I think it's good to keep in mind that things we take for granted now were once considered extremely difficult.  According to CNN, it's cool to like pi.

So today, in honor of Pi Day, I decided to refresh my memory and sharpen my programming skills by implementing Viète's Forumla. Viète's formula, developed in 1593, expands on the Archimedes method of approximating pi developed around 250 B.C.  This method relies on computing the circumference of regular polygons with many sides. As you increase the sides of the polygon, it gets closer and closer to being a circle, and thus, the ratio of the perimeter to the "diameter" gets closer to the value of pi.