Nerd Girls Blog
Chic Geek of the Week: Tina Fey
posted by Amy Lynch on December 04, 2008
She was the first female to earn the position of head writer of America’s most famous live sketch comedy show. She was named one of the “100 People Who Shape Our World” by TIME magazine. She immortalized herself as a master impersonator - and, frankly, spitting image of - one of the most polarizing figures in world politics today. And she made librarian glasses cool.
Tina Fey’s razor-sharp wit was evident in eighth grade when she leapt headfirst into an independent study project about comedy. Born to a brokerage employee and a grant writer in a suburb of Philadelphia, she grew up watching Saturday Night Live in the 1970s and 80s. Little did she know back then that she would later contribute to the episodes that raked in the show’s highest ratings ever (and became NBC.com’s most-watched viral video) by doing a series of dead-on impressions of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Celebrating Women in Computing
posted by Gail Carmichael on October 09, 2008
Have you ever been in a room with more than 1500 other ‘nerd girls’? Let me tell you, it’s the most amazing and unexpected feeling you could imagine. This is exactly what I got to experience the first week of October when I traveled to Keystone, Colorado for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. If you get excited while reading what I have to say about it, then mark your calendars for next year’s edition to be held around that first week of October in Tucson, Arizona. You won’t want to miss it.
Connect with Computer Science
posted by Gail Carmichael on September 25, 2008
If you thought that computer science was all about sitting in boring old cubicles, pounding away on the keyboard and writing code all day, think again! You can connect computer science with just about anything you’re interested in.
Take video games, for instance. If you have a passion for entertaining others, you can use the coding skills you learn in college to help develop the next blockbuster hit in one of the fastest growing industries around. But it goes much further than just programming.
Chic Geek of the Week: Summer Williams
posted by Amy Lynch on September 18, 2008
Let’s be honest: when we think of cheerleaders, several images automatically spring to mind. Ponytails. Pom poms. Short skirts. Rocket scientists with pilots’ licenses.
Wait… what? Maybe not so much that last part. Still, aerospace engineer Summer Williams stood amid the squad at Houston Texans games through two seasons, riling up the crowds and cheering for touchdowns. The Kansas native tried out for the squad in 2005, essentially on a dare from male colleagues who wanted to meet the squad members and thought Summer could help them. She had a background in cheerleading and dance, so she gave it a somewhat reluctant shot and was selected as one of 33 cheerleaders from the 1,000 women who showed up for tryouts that day.
Making Games Think
posted by Gail Carmichael on September 04, 2008
As more women than ever before begin to find themselves interested in video games, it’s likely that many women are also wondering, “What is it that makes games think?” For many games, from adventure and role playing genres to challenges like chess, game developers need to incorporate techniques that allow help a computer to think for itself in a timely fashion. Some of these techniques will be revealed below as light is shed on what gives games brains.
First, let’s reflect on why having good artificial intelligence (also known simply as AI) can be so important for a game to be fun. Many board games and first person shooters can’t be played without an actual opponent, but a human contender is not always available.
Girls Really ARE Good at Math
posted by Gail Carmichael on August 18, 2008
A lot of people think that girls just don’t “do” math. In fact, many of these same people believe that this is related to girls just being better at different things than boys. This might be true in some areas, but recent studies have shown that, when it comes to math, girls just might be as good if not better!
You might be surprised to learn that not all of these studies are recent. Janet Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, found that girls tested in math just as well as boys before high school. That was in the late eighties/early nineties
Women and the Quality of Code
posted by Gail Carmichael on July 25, 2008
A good way to stir up some controversy is to bring up possible differences between the way men and women write code. Add to it a tone that suggests that women write better code, and you’ll really get people talking. Is there something to it? Would you really be able to tell the difference between male and female code, and could you really say that one is better than the other?
Chic Geek of the Week: Danica McKellar
posted by Amy Lynch on July 25, 2008
This week’s brainiac bombshell: Danica McKellar. You may remember her as Kevin Arnold’s long-standing crush, Winnie Cooper, on the classic television show The Wonder Years. More recently, you might have caught her in her role as Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing or Trudy on How I Met Your Mother. Or perhaps you’ve perused a physics journal and stumbled across the Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem she co-authored before graduating summa cum laude in mathematics from UCLA.
Danica took a break from acting to pursue her studies in math and then took her education a step further by sharing it with anyone who would listen.
(photo credit: USA Today)
Chic Geek of the Week: Natalie Portman
posted by Amy Lynch on July 16, 2008
Starlets. They’re everywhere. On television, in magazines, splashed across the Internet, and constantly in our faces, the Hollywood It Girl is as ubiquitous as oxygen. We can’t seem to escape her, and some of us admittedly don’t want to. But to those of us who pride ourselves on our intelligence, aren’t some of these so-called role models rather… uninspiring?
Here at Nerd Girls, we like to give props to girls who say what they mean and mean what they say. And when they’re smart, isn’t what they say a whole lot more interesting?
Photo Credit: People.com
The Magic Behind Wall-E
posted by Gail Carmichael on July 16, 2008
If there was ever a doubt that computer science and engineering are exciting career choices, let the recently released hit animated picture Wall-E change your mind. What most people see when they watch this movie is a touching love story from an unexpected source. Sure, I saw this too, but I also saw some of the many reasons it would be really cool to work in the computer animation industry!