More than 100 volunteers from the SAS Young Professionals Network (YPN) led sessions at Wake Forest Elementary school for the annual week-long Hour of Code initiative during Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) to teach kids to code. Students were challenged to work in groups and navigate a Sphero robot through
When students hear the word data, they may envision measurements that scientists collect, or perhaps it has something to do with the social media platforms they love. Many students struggle to understand where data comes from and how it can help us make decisions and better understand our world! They may not make a connection with computer science either. Just as
Last year during Computer Science Education Week, some in the corporate community participated in The Hour of Code. To those who visited classrooms, thank you! Telling students about the exciting careers in computer science not only inspires leaders of tomorrow, but it also leads to more graduates equipped to innovate
There are two activities which, when taken in combination, have occupied the vast majority of my working hours for the past 20 years: writing computer programs and writing...well, just writing. During my college years I completed my degree with a double-major: Computer Science and English. (My English degree has a
On his SAS and R blog, Ken K. recently posted an example of a visualization technique called "small multiples". In this exercise, Ken shows the programming technique for replicating a particular series of pie charts in R as well as in SAS. It's a useful exercise to learn from, but
December 4 marked the beginning of Computer Science Education Week, and I'd like to take a moment to consider how the business community might support K-12 schools as they respond to this rapidly changing field. Many years ago when computer science courses first appeared in schools, they were considered “extra”
When I was a teenager in the 1980s I purchased my first computer: a TI-99/4A. (Wow, TI's version numbers are more confusing than ours!) I had several friends who had other brands of computers, including the TRS-80 (affectionately known as the "trash 80") and the Commodore 64. Despite our divisions
I helped to write a quiz for the Computer Science Education Week promotions that were featured on our company intranet. Do you fancy yourself as a Comp-Sci aficionado? Let's see how you do with these. 1. Which achievement is Charles Babbage most famous for? A. Establishing software retail shops in
Computer science is more than the pursuit of "let's see what we can make this computer do." If that's your only goal, then you might make a fine computer geek, but a lousy computer scientist. In her blog post for Computer Science Education Week, Caroline McCullen reminds us that computer
Author note: I'm "replaying" this post in honor of Computer Science Education Week. It originally appeared here over 3 years ago. Today was "career day" in my daughter's 3rd grade classroom. A few privileged parents were invited to attend and answer questions about their professions, press-conference style. Among those on
Next week we'll be celebrating Computer Science Education Week. SAS is a partner in this event, which makes complete sense because we have a vested interest in creating more computer scientists. After all, SAS does employ a lot of them. When I was enrolled in a computer science program (sometime
