CS 373 Fall 2022: Blog Post 13

What did you do this past week?

This past week my group and I finished up Phase 3. We left most of our project for the last few days, but we were able to get everything finished in time. We made our front-end code a little cleaner and we fixed any bugs or flaws in our front-end design. I also worked extensively on my machine learning project and improved the accuracy of our algorithm to 0.78 for a 5-class classifier on house prices in Washington.

What’s in your way?

There isn’t really anything in my way right now. I’ll probably use some of Thanksgiving Break to get ahead on my machine learning assignments in the next few weeks and Phase 4 for SWE.

What will you do next week?

This upcoming week, my group and I will work to fix the rest of our major and minor updates to our front-end site so that we can make our video presentation in preparation for presenting to the class on Wednesday since we are one of the first groups going. I’ll also get ahead on some assignments for other classes since I have a couple of days free during Thanksgiving break.

What did you think of Paper #13. What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You?

I was disappointed, but not shocked by reading about the experiences that the women had to go through in the research field. Research in STEM is a male-dominated field, and as such women and other underrepresented minorities are often poorly treated. Some men incorrectly believe that minorities present at work did not meet the qualifications to work there and were simply “hired for diversity,” which has harmful effects on the careers of these individuals. They also believe that they can get away with perverse behavior. To fix this, we need a massive cultural change in these fields, and any less is unacceptable.

What was your experience of the Strategy Pattern, Reflection, and security talk? (this question will vary, week to week)

I found the Strategy pattern and reflection lectures interesting because we considered changing the code in ways that I would not have thought of, or would have originally thought were unnecessary and complex. In the end, I ended up realizing that the proposed changes helped maintain the integrity of the code and made more sense. I didn’t really enjoy the security talk as I thought it was too simple in the first half.

What made you happy this week?

I am happy that Thanksgiving break is here and I get to go visit my family in Houston for a week! I also got to go to a game night hosted by my friends a couple of days ago, and that is always fun!

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip of the week is to use Google Colab when working with large datasets, Python, and machine learning. Google Colab allows you to share a Jupiter-style notebook with your colleagues and teammates in order to let you all see the most recent changes. The computation of these large datasets is also done online, instead of on your local machine which really helps with the speed of these computations if your computer is on the slower side.