Here's an exciting first which hopefully indicates a promising trend: This year women outnumber men in UC Berkeley's introductory computer science course. The fieldĀ is vastly dominated by men, and the Berkeley course seems to be an exception, according to Tech Crunch. The difference is small--106 women to 104 men; yet the potential reasons why there is this rare lead provides invaluable insight into how to attract more women to computer science.
Overall, the number of women in the STEM world has been down since 1991. What is Berkeley doing right? Professor Dan Garcia, who taught the class last spring, attributes the increase to significantly more team-based project learning and increased opportunities for students to become teaching assistants. Tech Crunch provides interesting data on computer science's gender gap overall. And Maria Konnikova for Big Think breaks down different approaches for understanding the gender gap in education and the workplace.
Image credit: Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr
LinkedIn meets Tinder in this mindful networking app
Swipe right to make the connections that could change your career.
Swipe right. Match. Meet over coffee or set up a call.
No, we aren't talking about Tinder. Introducing Shapr, a free app that helps people with synergistic professional goals and skill sets easily meet and collaborate.
4 reasons Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for universal basic income
In his final years, Martin Luther King, Jr. become increasingly focused on the problem of poverty in America.
- Despite being widely known for his leadership role in the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. also played a central role in organizing the Poor People's Campaign of 1968.
- The campaign was one of the first to demand a guaranteed income for all poor families in America.
- Today, the idea of a universal basic income is increasingly popular, and King's arguments in support of the policy still make a good case some 50 years later.
Why avoiding logical fallacies is an everyday superpower
10 of the most sandbagging, red-herring, and effective logical fallacies.
- Many an otherwise-worthwhile argument has been derailed by logical fallacies.
- Sometimes these fallacies are deliberate tricks, and sometimes just bad reasoning.
- Avoiding these traps makes disgreeing so much better.
Why I wear my life on my skin
For Damien Echols, tattoos are part of his existential armor.
- In prison Damien Echols was known by his number SK931, not his name, and had his hair sheared off. Stripped of his identity, the only thing he had left was his skin.
- This is why he began tattooing things that are meaningful to him ā to carry a "suit of armor" made up the images of the people and objects that have significance to him, from his friends to talismans.
- Echols believes that all places are imbued with divinity: "If you interact with New York City as if there's an intelligence behind... then it will behave towards you the same way."
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