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The last speaker
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The last speaker

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London (from the cs4fn archive) The languages of the world are going extinct at a rapid rate. As the numbers of peopleContinue...

The joke Turing test
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The joke Turing test

A funny thing happened on the way to the computer by Peter W. McOwan, Queen Mary University of London (from the archive) Laugh and the world laughs with you they...

The Chinese room: zombie attack!
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The Chinese room: zombie attack!

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London (From the cs4fn archive) Iain M Banks’s science fiction novels about ‘The Culture’ imagine a universe inhabitedContinue...

The paranoid program
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

The paranoid program

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London One of the greatest characters in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, science fiction radio series,...

How does Santa do it?
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

How does Santa do it?

Fast yuletide algorithms to visit all those chimneys in time by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London How does Santa do it? How does he visit all those children...

Pepper’s Ghost: an 1860s illusion used in ‘head-up displays’ ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Pepper’s Ghost: an 1860s illusion used in ‘head-up displays’ ^JB

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London (first published in 2007) When Pepper’s Ghost first appeared on the stage as part of one of Professor Pepper’s shows...

Making sense of squishiness – 3D modelling the natural world
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Making sense of squishiness – 3D modelling the natural world

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Look out the window at the human-made world. It’s full of hard, geometric shapes – our buildings, the roads, our...

Watching whales well – the travelling salesman problem ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Watching whales well – the travelling salesman problem ^JB

Island-hopping your way around the Travelling Salesman Problem (and back again).

A round up of our posts for #BlackHistoryMonth 2022
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

A round up of our posts for #BlackHistoryMonth 2022

A round up of our blog posts, published during #BlackHistoryMonth 2022.

Recognising (and addressing) bias in facial recognition tech – the Gender Shades Audit #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Recognising (and addressing) bias in facial recognition tech – the Gender Shades Audit #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB

A 2018 study found that facial recognition systems were ess able to recognise darker skinned women because of bias in the data used to train them - but things are...

Happy Hallowe’en – free spooky puzzles and activities
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Happy Hallowe’en – free spooky puzzles and activities

Free Hallowe'en activities and puzzles for the classroom or at home ^JB

Devices that work for everyone #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Devices that work for everyone #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB

Good design should take everyone into account - examples here from a variety of sensors (cameras, soap dispenser sensors and oximeters) which didn't take account...

Facing up to the problems of recognising faces #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Facing up to the problems of recognising faces #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB

How the use of facial recognition technology caused a mistaken arrest.

Hidden Figures – NASA’s brilliant calculators #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Hidden Figures – NASA’s brilliant calculators #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB

The African-American women of NASA Langley who helped programme our way to the Moon.

Writing together: Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Writing together: Clarence ‘Skip’ Ellis #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB

Back in 1956, Clarence Ellis started his career at the very bottom of the computer industry. He was given a job, at the age of 15, as a "computer operator"... because...

An Inspiration: computer scientist Mark Dean #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

An Inspiration: computer scientist Mark Dean #BlackHistoryMonth ^JB

In 2006 QMUL one of the winning essays in the first year essay competition was written by one of our computing students, Dean Miller. He wrote about a fellow Black...

Freddie Figgers – the abandoned baby who became a runaway telecom tech star
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Freddie Figgers – the abandoned baby who became a runaway telecom tech star

Freddie Figgers' parents encouraged him to fix things - he now owns the first Black-owned telecommunications company in the US. #BlackHistoryMonth

Gladys West: Where’s my satellite? Where’s my child? #BlackHistoryMonth
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Gladys West: Where’s my satellite? Where’s my child? #BlackHistoryMonth

Gladys West solved the maths problems behind the positioning of satellites. She worked closely with programmers to write the code to do calculations based on her...

Kakuro, Logic and Computer Science – problem-solving brain teasers
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Kakuro, Logic and Computer Science – problem-solving brain teasers

Imagine being able to pick up an ordinary banana and use it as a phone. That's part of the vision of 'invoked computing', which is being developed by Japanese researchers...

Cold hard complexity: learning to talk in nature’s language
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)

Cold hard complexity: learning to talk in nature’s language

Think of an ecosystem like a sentence – there are thousands of words in the English language but in order to make a sentence you have to put them together in the...
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