1. Members of the Caltech community live, learn, and work within an Honor System with one simple guideline; "No member shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community." While seemingly simple, questions of ethics, honesty and integrity are sometimes puzzling. Share a difficult situation that has challenged you. What was your response, and how did you arrive at a solution? (200 word max)
The students in my school are some of the most stressed out people I have ever seen. It may be be the courses, or that we are in a Dual-enrollment program, but whatever it is, my fellow classmates and I are under a lot of stress. One of the most stressful periods for these students is picking classes for the next semester because it falls at the same time as finals week. The process of picking classes is not simple because of the need to cross-reference dual-enrollment approved courses, courses that are offered at the college and whether the time is within our time block for college courses. This takes up too much time during finals week, so I set out to make a simpler process using my programming skills. I made a web app under the URL http://SAS.NickTheSick.com/ that brings ease to the process of picking courses by: showing exclusively dual-enrollment approved courses, displaying the various times a class is available and even giving suggestions of courses to help complete your AA. Making the web app was no simple task. I worked on it practically everyday for just over 3 months to make it in time for the next session to make it easier to pick courses for the summer. It was a hit! Everyone was using it by word of mouth alone; I'd walk by and peers would be thanking me for saving them time and making it so simple.
Making the web app was no simple task though, I worked on it practically everyday for just over 3 months in time for the next session to pick courses for the summer. It was a hit! Everyone was using it by word of mouth alone, I'd walk by and peers would be thanking me for saving them time and making it so simple.
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2. Caltech students have long been known for their quirky sense of humor, whether it be through planning creative pranks, building elaborate party sets, or even the year-long preparation that goes into our annual Ditch Day. Please describe an unusual way in which you have fun. (200 word max)
I taught a few friends how to program within the past year and we have been having fun by going on GitHub and making fun of each others' work. Not in a sadistic way, of course, but to improve our work because each program is practically guaranteed in every case possible because of how they test my code.An example of this would be if I were to have a function that adds two numbers together they would try to break my program and add two words or a number and word. It's funny and interesting to think of ways that the other person's program would fail because of errors like this leading to better programs overall. This makes me write tested code where I write tests to see whether the program works in off the wall cases like these. Because my code is tested I can be assured that it will work in the cases that I have specified; making it even harder for them to come up with ways to break it. It's even funnier when they claim that it breaks in a certain way but are incorrect in there thinking because they don't fully understand the language and its nuances.
3. In an increasingly global and interdependent society, there is a need for diversity in thought, background, and experience in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. How do you see yourself contributing to the diversity of Caltech's community? (200 word max)
My true love is to tinker and to create, to dissect and develop. I have developed an ability to learn and this I feel is my
true ability. Me being able to learn so quickly is the only way that I would've been able to teach myself to program at 12. It has enabled me to pick up all these computer languages that I know and semi-understanding (not even for the most part because there is too much to learn) of how computers work. My greatest fear is not knowing the answer to a question that I feel I should know, this fear isn't as much of a fear as it is a drive. Driving me to understand the difference between equal and equivalent, as much as it drives me to understandthe default capacity of a nil string in Java (its 16 by the way)Other thing here.
4. Scientific exploration clearly excites you. Beyond our 3:1 student-to-faculty ratio and our intense focus on research opportunities, how do you believe Caltech will best fuel your intellectual curiosity and help you meet your goals? (500 word max)
I love to learn; I always need new topics and subject matters in order to understand the world a little better than I did yesterday. This is why I love computer science: everything is so new and being improved upon that what I know today does not necessarily apply to tomorrow. It is one of few fields where I will constantly be learning different ways to get my work done and that if anything is out of order I can do something to patch it. CalTech can help achieve my goal in being a part of a world-changing idea in technology. With its course selection and excellent professors, I can learn more than I ever have taught myself. In order to get to where I want to be in life I need to be in the software capital of the world, California. Where I can strive to learn all that I can from Caltech and work my way to the top of something as big as Google, FaceBook and Apple. In order to get there though, I need to learn the ins and outs of business, computer science and mathematics to be able to grasp the work that I desire.
##Prompt 1: Pomona's Critical Inquiry course is required of all first-year students, and is designed to be highly interdisciplinary and engaging. Recent class titles include: ''The Politics of Classical Art,'' ''Seeing Science,'' and ''The Theatre and Environmental Activism.'' Imagine you were hired to design and teach a Critical Inquiry course. Describe the title of the class, its contents, and why you chose it.
If I were to create a class, it would be called "The Logic of Programming: An Introduction". The class itself would not be about programming itself but rather the logic that goes into it such as organization, structure and inferences. The meat of the course would teach important logic skills yet relate them to computing because let's face it "software is eating our world" (Marc Andreessen,2011). Everyone should learn this because everyone is using this technology yet haven't the slightest clue how it all works, and even the simplest of reasoning can become complex quickly. The class I'd develop would aid students in a way that is relevant to them. I choose this type of course primarily because it is very relevant to me and what I know (about 10 programming languages). At the same time I feel it's an important skill-set to have, because it can benefit students who do not need to learn programming, because everyone needs to learn to make rational decisions.