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For as long as Jake Price has been a teacher, Wolfram Alpha a website that solves algebraic problems online has threatened to make algebra homework obsolete.

Teachers learned to work around and with it, said Price, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Puget Sound, in Tacoma, Washington. But now, they have a new homework helper to contend with: generative artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT.

Price doesnt see ChatGPT as a threat,and hes not alone. Some math professors believe AI, when used correctly, could help strengthen math instruction. And its arriving on the scene at a time when math scores are at a national historic low and educators are questioning if math should be taught differently.

AI can serve as a tutor, giving a student who is floundering with a problem immediate feedback. It can help a teacher plan math lessons, or write a variety of math problems geared toward different levels of instruction. It can even show new computer programmers sample code, allowing them to skip over the boring chore of learning how to write basic code.

As schools across the country debate banning AI tools, some math and computer science teachers are embracing the change because of the nature of their discipline.

Related: How can schools dig out from a generations worth of lost math progress?

Math has always been evolving as technology evolves, said Price. A hundred years ago, people were using slide rules and doing all of their multiplication with logarithmic tables. Then, along came calculators.

Sluggish growth in math scores for U.S. students began long before the pandemic, but the problem has snowballed into an education crisis. This back-to-school season, the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, will be documenting the enormous challenge facing our schools and highlighting examples of progress. The three-year-old Reporting Collaborative includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.

Price teaches with human-capable technologies in mind, making sure to give students the skills in class by hand. Then, he discusses with them the limitations of the technologies they might be tempted to use when they get home.

Computers are really good at doing tedious things, Price said. We dont have to do all the tedious stuff. We can let the computer do it. And then we can interpret the answer and think about what it tells us about the decisions we need to make.

He wants his students to enjoy looking for patterns, seeing how different methods can give different or the same answers and how to translate those answers into decisions about the world.

ChatGPT, just like the calculator and just like the slide rule and all the technology before, just helps us get at that core, real part of math, Price said.

Conversely, ChatGPT has its limits. It can show the right steps to solving a math problem and then give the wrong answer.

This is because its not actually doing the math, Price said. Its just pulling together pieces of the sentences where other people have described how to solve similar problems.

Min Sun, a University of Washington education professor, thinks students should use ChatGPT like a personal tutor. If students get lost in class and dont understand a mathematical operation, they can ask ChatGPT to explain it and give them a few examples.

The Khan Academy, an educational nonprofit that provides a collection of online learning tools and videos and has long been a go-to for math homework, has created exactly that.

The tutor is called Khanmigo. Students can open it while completing math problems and tell it that they are stuck.

They can have a conversation with the AI tutor, telling it what they dont understand, and the AI tutor helps to explain, said Kristen DiCerbo, the chief learning officer at Khan Academy.

Instead of saying, Heres the answer for you, it says things like, Whats the next step? or What do you think might be the next thing to do? DiCerbo said.

Related: The science of reading swept reforms into classrooms nationwide. What about math?

Sun, the UW education professor, wants teachers to use ChatGPT as their own assistant: to plan math lessons, give students good feedback and communicate with parents.

Teachers can ask AI, What is the best way to teach this concept? Or What are the kinds of mistakes students tend to make when learning this math concept? Or, What kinds of questions will students have about this concept?

Teachers can also ask ChatGPT to recommend different levels of math problems for students with different mastery of the concept, she said. This is particularly helpful for teachers who are new to the profession or have students with diverse needs special education or English language learners, Sun said.

Im amazed by the details that sometimes ChatGPT can offer, Sun said. It gives you some initial ideas and possible problem areas for students so I can get myself more prepared before walking into the classroom.

And, if a teacher already has a high-quality lesson plan, they could feed that to ChatGPT and ask it to create another lesson in a similar teaching style, but for a different concept.

Sun hopes ChatGPT can also help teachers write more culturally appropriate word-problem questions to make all their students feel included.

The current technology is really a technical assistant to support them, empower them, amplify their creative abilities, Sun said. It is really not a substitute to their own agency, their own creativity, their own professionalism. They really need to keep that in mind.

Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety

A year ago, if you asked Daniel Zingaro how he assesses his introductory computer science students, he would say: We ask them to write code.

But if you ask him today, the answer would be far more complex, said Zingaro, an associate professor at the University of Toronto.

Zingaro and Leo Porter, a computer science professor at University of California San Diego, authored the book Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming with GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT. They believe AI will allow introductory computer science classes to tackle big-picture concepts.

A lot of beginner students get stuck writing very simple code, Porter and Zingaro said. They never move on to more advanced questions and many still cant write simple code after they complete the course.

Its not just uninteresting, it is frustrating, Porter added. They are trying to build something and they forgot a semicolon and theyll lose three hours trying to find that missing semicolon or some other bit of syntax that prevents a code from running properly.

AI doesnt make those mistakes, and allows computer science professors to spend more of their time teaching higher-level skills.

The professors now ask their students to take a big problem and break it down to smaller questions or tasks the code needs to do. They also ask students to test and debug code once it is already written.

If we think bigger picture about what we want our students to do, we want them to write software that is meaningful to them, Porter said. And this process of writing software is taking this fairly big, often not-well-defined problem and figuring out, how do I break them into pieces?

Magdalena Balazinska, director of the University of Washingtons Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, embraces the progress AI has made.

With the support of AI, human software engineers get to focus on the most interesting part of computer science: answering big software design questions, Balazinska said. AI allows humans to focus on the creative work.

Not all professors in the field think AI should be integrated into the curriculum. Some interviewed for a UC San Diego research paper and in an Education Week survey prefer blocking or negating the use of ChatGPT or similar tools like Photomath, at least in the short term.

Zingaro and Porter argue that reading a lot of code generated by AI doesnt feel like cheating. Rather, its how a student is going to learn.

I think a lot of programmers read a lot of code, just like how I believe the best writers read a lot of writing, Zingaro said. I think that is a very powerful way to learn.

This story about AI and math was produced by The Seattle Times in cooperation with the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that is documenting the math crisis facing schools and highlighting progress. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.

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AI might disrupt math and computer science classes - in a good way - The Hechinger Report

Youre seeing the story on your screen right now thanks to tiny switches known as transistors. The microchips in computers contain billions of them, each one sending electrical signals based on what you want the computer to do.

Microelectronics like these have become both essential and amazingly minuscule in the push to extract more computing power from less space. A single red blood cell dwarfs todays average transistor, which is about a thousand times smaller.

Thats still not quite small enough.

In a future driven by data and artificial intelligence (AI), even the most micro of microelectronics will need to shrink further and use less energy to boot. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are inventing the next generation of these computing building blocks.

The impact extends beyond our phones and desktops. Everything from how we travel to how we fight disease to our understanding of the universe and Earths climate depends on microelectronics-based devices.

Microelectronics are so embedded in everything we do that theyre really critical to the way we run our lives these days, said Argonne Distinguished Fellow and Materials Science Division Director Amanda Petford-Long, citing examples such as cars, online banking and the electric grid. I dont think anyone can get by without them.

Current microchips in smartphones can perform 17 trillion calculations per second, making them millions of times more powerful than their predecessors from several decades ago.

That astonishing leap in computing power seems unimaginable except that someone did imagine it: engineer Gordon Moore. Moore, who went on to co-found Intel, predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors placed on microchips would double every year for the next decade. He was right, and in 1975, when the number of transistors on a microchip surpassed 65,000, he revised the pace of doubling to every two years.

Whats now known as Moores law has held true, more or less. Today, a laptop might contain tens of billions of transistors embedded on a fingernail-size chip. The upcoming Aurora exascale supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science user facility, runs on tens of thousands of state-of-the-art processors that each pack 100 billion transistors into less than 4 square inches.

The Aurora processors power will enable more than 2 quintillion calculations per second. Those calculations will fuel the discoveries we need to generate clean energy, fight viruses, build more efficient engines, explore space and, of course, explore the next frontier of microelectronics, among other endeavors.

At some point, though, Moores law begins to run into physical barriers. Materials start to behave differently as device sizes vanish to the atomic level. Devices might trap too much heat when stacked together, and they hit walls on memory and speed. Even more pressing, our growing need for microelectronics devours energy and is projected to consume a quarter of the worlds supply by 2030.

Argonne researchers are tackling these problems through a combination of new materials, hardware and software designs, and manufacturing methods. In the process, they are also pushing the boundaries of where computers can go, making electronics that stretch like skin or operate in scorching temperatures beyond your ovens hottest setting.

Silicon has been the workhorse material used to make each successive wave of powerful microchips. Its abundant, and its conductivity the ability to transmit electricity can be adjusted by adding impurities. However, the size of microelectronics is now measured in single-digit nanometers, or a billionth of a meter. The smaller they get, the harder it is to pattern these impurities reliably.

Microelectronics are so embedded in everything we do that theyre really critical to the way we run our lives these days. I dont think anyone can get by without them. Amanda Petford-Long, division director and Argonne Distinguished Fellow

Researchers at Argonne and other national laboratories are exploring alternative materials and designs to get around this limitation, as well as to increase energy efficiency. One possibility is to incorporate materials that have reversible responses to electric fields. Another project focuses on using metal oxides to create printable transistors. Diamond thin films are being developed using the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility, to remove the heat that builds up when microelectronics are placed on top of each other.

Honing these concepts requires time-consuming steps to determine the optimal conditions for creating a particular material. Thin films, for example, are grown on surfaces atom-by-atom in a process called atomic layer deposition. Researchers use a special apparatus to make these films, evaluating conditions in cycle after cycle. Its not unlike testing a baking recipe, where you have to wait for the final product to come out of the oven and then determine what went right or wrong before starting over again.

To move faster, researchers are experimenting with self-driving labs that bring AI into the loop. The process may start with computer simulations that inform actual experiments. The data from experiments then strengthens the simulations, and so on.

Angel Yanguas-Gil, a principal materials scientist at Argonne, is applying the self-driving lab concept to atomic layer deposition for faster, and thus lower-cost, discovery of materials for microelectronics. In this case, AI is helping to drive the experiment.

The computer is making its own decision and exploring a new condition in real time, and then you end up with the optimum condition much faster, said Yanguas-Gil. It takes a matter of minutes instead of, say, days.

In a space where materials are designed down to the atom, the most ingenious innovation will have trouble moving beyond the lab if it is not fit to a specific purpose.

We spend many years developing materials with very interesting properties, but the connection with the applications sometimes isnt strong, Yanguas-Gil said.

Scientists are addressing this gap in the Threadwork project. The name nods to weaving together different strands of microelectronics development with specific uses in mind, particularly those for future detectors in high energy physics and nuclear physics. Those strands include the materials, the devices built with those materials, the system architecture and more.

In Threadwork, were constantly looking at all these different levels of system design and what they mean in terms of the end use, said Mathematics and Computer Science Division Director Valerie Taylor who leads the project. Its not that one persons working independently of what everybody else is doing. Youre working on designs together, from different perspectives.

Many of these designs for microchips, along with the software they power, attempt to mimic the brain.

The brain consists of approximately 86 billion neurons, but only uses about 20 watts of power. This is great energy efficiency, Taylor said. So, we are developing brain-inspired or neuromorphic devices.

A traditional computer architecture has separate areas for operations and for memory. That layout requires information to constantly flow between the two areas, limiting how fast computers can process it. Future neuromorphic processors might be set up more like your brain, where memories and actions combine in sets of neurons that are networked together. A more compact, brain-like network reduces the amount of travel for electric signals, boosting efficiency. Transistors similar to neurons, or memristors, also might be able to communicate not just a binary value zero or one but a range of values within one signal, the way spikes from neurons do.

Human brains are not the only models for Argonnes interdisciplinary design approach. Yanguas-Gil and colleagues have designed and simulated a neuromorphic chip inspired by the brains of bees, fruit flies and ants. The concept relies on a unique material developed at Argonne and was tested using the ALCFs Theta supercomputer.

It sounds trivial, but one of the biggest challenges in going smaller with microelectronics is that you have to be able to make the thing, said Petford-Long. To use another baking analogy, if youre making a cookie that is 10 atoms across, its extremely hard to get a cookie cutter that can churn out absolutely identical shapes. Even minute variations matter, Petford-Long added: Because these structures are so small, one inconsistency can make a big difference in how they behave.

Another challenge is that the actual shape being stamped out may change from a flat plane with transistors in rows to more neuron-like shapes that also may be stacked on top of one another.

Current lithography for semiconductors is highly successful, but it is set up for a 2D world where the chip is flat, said Supratik Guha, senior advisor to Argonnes Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate and a professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. In the coming decades, chips will become increasingly 3D. This requires new ways of fabricating chips.

One of those new ways might be to use 3D printers. One Argonne project aims to create low-power, high-performance printable transistors. Other work is focused on even finer and more precise tools for atomic layer deposition that can chisel increasingly intricate features onto devices.

As scientists explore new materials, configurations and manufacturing techniques for microelectronics, the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility, will be key. With an upgrade that is currently in progress, the APSs X-ray beams will become up to 500 times brighter. The increased brightness will also lend itself to smaller spot sizes that can zero in on the smallest of features in a material or semiconductor device.

The powerful new tools at Argonne will contribute to a sort of flywheel effect. The APS and other observational tools will generate more data than ever. That data will feed the innovation of the very processors that will analyze it at the Aurora supercomputer and beyond.

Some of this work is in the very initial stages, but this is why we do continuous basic research, Guha said. The questions we are trying to answer will lead us to design new classes of materials and devices and new ways of connecting them so that, moving forward, we can meet the extreme energy efficiency challenges that we face.

This research is funded, in part, by the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences and the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research program.

The rest is here:

How microelectronics will take computing to new heights - Argonne National Laboratory

For the fourth straight year, Rose-Hulman has been ranked for having one of the nations top undergraduate computer science programs, according to rankings featured in the 2024 U.S. News & World Report's College Guide.

Rose-Hulman tied for 56th out of 554 programs nationally this year, higher than last years rankings. This places Rose-Hulman within the top 10 of Midwest institutions, and among a select group of private colleges across the nation.

Deans and senior faculty familiar with U.S. computer science departments were surveyed to assess programs at ABET-accredited bachelors degree-granting colleges and universities based upon the academic quality and training in areas of programming languages, computer systems, theory, data analysis, and data science.

The programs continued high national ranking is based on our strong, innovative, up-to-date, and expanding curriculum, the expertise of our faculty and staff, and the quality of contributions our graduates are making in their career fields, said Sriram Mohan, PhD, head of Rose-Hulmans Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.

A new minor in cybersecurity is allowing students to gain the skills necessary to meet future high-tech challenges and become familiar with cybersecurity issues. A minor in Artificial Intelligence is helping students gain expertise in an area with potential to reshape the modern world. Meanwhile, data science is offered as a second academic major and a bachelors degree in international computer science features spending a year living and learning in Germany to earn a dual degree from Rose-Hulman and Hochschule Ulm University of Applied Sciences.

Mohan asserts that the computer science program provides the fundamental skills, theoretical underpinnings and the practical knowhow in a hands-on and caring educational environment that allows a growing number of alumni to impact the computing industry.

Rose-Hulmans Class of 2022 computer science majors had a near 100% placement rate within six months of Commencement, with an average starting salary of $95,801 and a high salary offer of $165,000. These opportunities included career employment with companies such as Amazon, Cisco Systems, Cummins, DMI, Edgile, Google, Microsoft, Raytheon, Software Engineering Professionals, Telemetry Sports, and Zotec Partners. Students also went onto to attend graduate schools at Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Indiana University, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, University of Illinois, and University of Southern California.

Software engineering graduates had a 100% placement rate in 2022, with an average starting salary of $101,997 and high salary offer of $125,000 from such companies as Groupon, Lexmark International, and Toyota.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Rick Stamper points out that the ability of Rose-Hulman computer science and software engineering students to quickly adapt and learn about new technology environments has the programs alumni being highly respected and coveted by employers and graduate/doctorate degree program leaders. Students have showcased their computing and problem-solving skills in national and regional programming contests and Hackathons for several years.

Our computer science program continues to be highly respected for providing academic and extracurricular opportunities that prepare our graduates for an ever-changing technology landscape. Thats what brings a record number of companies from throughout the country each year to recruit our students for full-time, internship, and co-op work opportunities, said Stamper, pointing out that Rose-Hulman graduates, no matter the academic major, are lifelong learners.

Rose-Hulman was recently ranked No. 17 in the nation in the Wall Street Journals Best Colleges in America guide, as well as No. 1 in both learning opportunities and learning facilities; second in the nation in the likelihood of students recommending the college to others; and fourth in career preparation. U.S. News and World Report ranked Rose-Hulman first for the 25th consecutive year among U.S. engineering colleges that are focused on bachelors and masters-level education. Rose-Hulmans computer engineering program was judged first by engineering deans and senior engineering faculty, along with civil engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering.

Learn more about the Rose-Hulmans rankings and national distinction here.

Rose-Hulmans Early Action deadline to apply for the 2024-25 school year is Nov. 1, 2023.

Originally posted here:

Computer Science Program Once Again Ranked Among Nation's Best - Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

The Southern State Community College Foundation has announced Thomas Browning of Franklin County as a recipient of the Sara M. Barrere Memorial Scholarship for the 2023-24 academic year.

Browning, a 2003 high school graduate, is a working husband and father of three as well as an Air Force veteran. He is pursuing a degree in computer information technology at Southern State Community College, under the direction of associate professor Dr. Joshua Montgomery.

I first heard about Southern State when Dr. Montgomery came to my workplace to talk about getting the A-plus certification. He was approachable and took time to talk to me about his course and how it would compare to the A-plus certification I already had, Browning said.

Browning decided to enroll in Montgomerys course at Southern State. While taking his course, I was struck by how much Dr. Montgomery genuinely cares for his students. I already hold two associate degrees, and Ive not had a professor who has such a passion for their students, added Browning.

At the end of the course, Browning spoke with an academic advisor about whether he should complete the associate of applied science degree program at Southern State with Montgomery or move on to his bachelors degree since he already had the majority of the credits from his prior two degrees.

Although the academic advisor recommended going straight into a bachelors degree program, Browning knew that Southern State had a professor from whom he had more to learn.

I enrolled in the computer science program and modified my future BS/MS degree plans to accommodate the additional technology-based associate of applied science degree. Ive also been given the opportunity to join Phi Theta Kappa, an international college honor society, since coming to Southern State, said Browning.

He added, I am grateful for the opportunity to set a good example for my children, and being awarded this scholarship allows me to focus on my studies and provide inspiration to help them find what they are passionate about.

Browning hopes to continue his education by obtaining his bachelors and masters degrees in IT management, and continue to work in the IT field, helping dispel the stigma that IT people are distant and unapproachable.

The Southern State Computer Science Program offers an associate of applied science degree in computer technology. Students can select two focus areas from four different pathway options, which include networking, programming, cybersecurity and robotics.

A degree in computer technology from Southern State will allow students to gain in-demand skills in a flexible, affordable and fun environment. Southern State helps students get connected with companies in the area for internships and job opportunities. To learn more, visit https://www.sscc.edu/academics/programs/computer-science.shtml.

Spring semester begins Jan. 8, 2024. Registration is underway.

Submitted by Elizabeth Burkard, director of marketing, Southern State Community College.

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Computer science led Browning to SSCC - Hillsboro Times Gazette

JEE Main 2024: The National Institute of Technology (NIT) Hamirpur admits candidates to its undergraduate engineering programmes on the basis of the Joint Entrance Examination Main (JEE Main) ranks. The institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes and PhD courses.

All the NITs hold separate counselling processes through the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA). While half of the seats are generally reserved for students from within the state in which the NIT is located, the remaining seats in the NIT are reserved for the ones from other states for admission to an NIT. In case of open and unreserved seats, students from outside the state will require higher JEE Main rank.

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Every year, around six rounds of JoSAA counselling are held and given below are the Round 1 opening and closing ranks at which NIT Hamirpur admitted students to its BTech in Computer Science and Engineering programme.

The NIT cut-off in 2023 for the other state category open seats dropped to 8774 from 6332 in 2022 and 874 in 2021.

NIT Hamirpur 2023 CSE Cut-Off Round 1

NIT Hamirpur JEE Cut-Off CSE Round 1 from 2022

NIT Hamirpur JEE round-1 Cut-Off for CSE from 2021

NIT Hamirpur JEE Cut-Off for CSE Round 1 counselling from 2020

NIT Hamirpur JEE Cut-Off for CSE Round 1 counselling from 2019

NIT Hamirpur was set up on August 7, 1986 as a Regional Engineering College, a joint and cooperative enterprise of the Indian government and Himachal Pradesh government. At the time of its inception, the institute had only two departments Civil and Electrical Engineering having an intake of 30 students in each.

IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd

First published on: 30-10-2023 at 09:59 IST

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JEE Main: NIT Hamirpur cut-offs for BTech in Computer Science and Engineering from last 5 years - The Indian Express