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Education & Academic

Unlocking Next-Level Certification at the Wolfram Data Science Boot Camp

Our second year of the Wolfram Data Science Boot Camp (and the first fully virtual edition) wrapped at the end of July. After completing final project assessments last week and issuing certificates, we can confidently say it was a success! Wolfram U mentors helped dozens of budding data scientists learn the multiparadigm approach and develop valuable skills in analysis, visualization, interface construction and more. Campers collaborated on projects of their own design, earning certifications along the way.

We’re proud of everyone who participated, and their efforts deserve some recognition! So without further ado, here’s a quick recap: how we ran the camp, what kinds of projects we saw and the lowdown on our new Level II Certification program.

Jamie Peterson, Director, Wolfram U
Education & Academic

The Wolfram High School Summer Camp Went Virtual, and It Was an Experience!

For more on Wolfram’s summer education programs, read our post about the Wolfram Summer School.

This year marked the ninth annual Wolfram High School Summer Camp, and it was a truly amazing experience. Forty-four students joined us remotely from around the world—from almost on the doorstep of Wolfram’s headquarters in Illinois to as far-flung as Kazakhstan, Germany, Russia, South Korea and India. They dedicated two weeks to learning the Wolfram Language, creating remarkably high-level independent projects and developing strong computational thinking skills. Our students had the opportunity to learn from subject experts from Wolfram Research, their mentors and teaching assistants (TAs) and, of course, our CEO Stephen Wolfram, who met with each student to discuss their projects.

Rory Foulger, Precollege Educational Programs, Outreach & Communications
Education & Academic

Pandemic-Inspired Innovations Make for the Best Wolfram Summer School Yet

For more on Wolfram’s summer education programs, read our post about the Wolfram Summer Camp.

The 18th annual Wolfram Summer School has just thrown its graduation party in High Fidelity, a virtual world augmented with spatial audio. Students and faculty sang together during karaoke with a DJ and jukebox, chatted away mixing techspeak and humor, said farewells and had a ball celebrating the completion of the program. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we chose to make our summer programs more accessible to the students and faculty from all corners of the world—this year from 25 countries and all populated continents.

Vitaliy Kaurov, Director of Community Engagement
Education & Academic

Advancing Coding Skills, Teamwork & Computational Thinking at the Wolfram Emerging Leaders Program

Computational thinking is an increasingly relevant and important skill to develop. The ability to break down problems into their component parts, and to piece together a solution quickly and accurately, is important for a variety of careers and pursuits in the 21st century. Even more important, perhaps, is that this skill enables you to express ideas clearly enough so that even a computer can understand them.
Rory Foulger, Precollege Educational Programs, Outreach & Communications
Education & Academic

Stay Connected with Wolfram Study Group Sessions, Livestreams and More

Remote work. Distance learning. Virtual events. These terms are becoming more commonplace as quarantines and stay-at-home orders continue and folks practice social distancing. While brainstorming how best to contribute to our customers around the world during these unusual times, we’ve generated a ton of data resources, analytics, free access to technology and much more.

However, these resources were still missing a deeper level of collaboration and interaction—the simple power of people coming together to connect, work and learn. With that in mind, here are some more group-oriented offerings to help keep you connected and in touch with one another, even in the new landscape of an almost entirely virtual world.

Danielle Mayer, Director of Outreach and Communications
Education & Academic

From an Hour of Code to a Lifetime of Coding with the Wolfram Language

Happy Hour of Code! There’s no better reason to start learning or continue honing your programming skills than the Hour of Code, an annual celebration of computer science during Computer Science Education Week. While we like to think that every hour is a great hour to code, we look forward to the Hour of Code event as an opportunity to come together and share some of our best Wolfram Language resources for students. Since its 2013 launch, the Hour of Code has been an immense success, introducing valuable programming skills to millions of students. So with this year’s Hour already underway, let’s take a look at the ways you can get started!

Ishwarya Vardhani, Education Partnerships Manager, Partnerships
Announcements & Events

The Winners of the 2019 One-Liner Competition

This year's Wolfram Technology Conference was host to the eighth annual One-Liner Competition, an event where attendees show us the most astounding things they can accomplish with 128 or fewer characters of Wolfram Language code. Submissions included games, card tricks and yoga exercises, all implemented with less than one tweet's worth of the Wolfram Language.

Christopher Carlson, Senior User Interface Developer, User Interfaces
Announcements & Events

Duking It Out in the Wolfram Language: A Breakdown of the 2019 Livecoding Championship

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of returning as a commentator for the fourth annual Livecoding Championship, a special event held during the 2019 Wolfram Technology Conference. We had such an incredible turnout this year, with 27 total participants and 14 earning at least one point! Conference attendees and Wolfram staff competed for the title of Livecoding Champion, with seven questions (plus one tiebreaker!) challenging their speed, agility and knowledge of the Wolfram Language. It was a high-spirited battle for first place, and while I had prepared “answer key” solutions in advance, I always look forward to the creativity and cleverness that competitors demonstrate in their wide range of approaches to each question.

By popular request, in addition to revisiting the questions, I’ll walk you through how competitors reached their solutions and earned their points, as a kind of “study guide” for next year’s aspiring champions. So hold on to your keyboards—we’re going in!

Jesse Friedman, Software Engineer, Engine Connectivity Engineering
Announcements & Events

Wolfram Technology Conference 2019: It’s a Wrap!

It’s been a whirlwind week of talks, training, workshops, networking and special events, and we’ve just closed another successful Wolfram Technology Conference! The week offered a multitude of opportunities for attendees and internal staff alike to connect, learn and enjoy unique experiences one can only get in Champaign, Illinois, every October. I’m happy to provide some highlights from the week and invite you to save the date to join us next year: October 6–9, 2020.

We began this week with pre-conference training on topics from machine learning and neural networks to application building and “Computational X,” offering headquarters tours and an opening reception before the “real” conference even began. Monday’s opening keynote by CEO Stephen Wolfram covered a ton of ground, from a Version 12 recap to a roadmap of things to come. True to tradition, Stephen uncovered bugs in pre-release versions of our software, livecoded examples and gave the audience so much to look forward to.

Danielle Mayer, Director of Outreach and Communications
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