Fwd: CS 262 : Make the World a Better Place

[Pedro Markun]

Caros,

acho que é um experimento sensacional. Vale todo mundo participar :)

abs,
Pedro Markun

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Udacity E-mail Robot <h...@knowlabs.com>
Date: Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:51 PM
Subject: CS 262 : Make the World a Better Place
To: pe...@esfera.mobi

Hello!

A number of students have asked about how they can help improve the state of the art or become involved in computer science research. This week we have posted a special "Research Request" video inviting you to spend 15 to 30 minutes growing the body of human knowledge. In professional software engineering, more time is spent reading code than writing it – but although understanding code has a huge economic impact, we do not have a formal model of what makes code readable. The best research study of code readability involves only 100 participants. I think that the students taking Udacity's on-line courses -- you -- can definitely outdo that!

No expertise or familiarity is required -- in fact, we need both experts and novices. We'll show you a few code snippets in your web browser, and you click to rate them based on your personal tastes. The study is completely anonymous: neither participating in it nor ignoring it will influence your Udacity grades or certificates in any way. You can see an explanatory video here http://goo.gl/r5NOA and you can participate here http://dijkstra.cs.virginia.edu/projects/readability/ . I will personally appreciate it if you will take 15 - 30 minutes to help us out, but I quite understand if you don't have the time.

On a more informal note, a number of students have asked for more songs or a bit more levity, and I have agreed to sing whatever you all like most (be

it Bollywood show tunes, Mandarin love songs or American folk music – anything) if we get enough participants. Cast your vote: http://goo.gl/dRh7Q .

(Fine print: This research study has IRB (human subjects panel) approval as well as Udacity approval.)

Thank you!

Wes and Peter