CS373 Fall 2020: Jonathan Randall
Hello, and welcome!
Where did you grow up?
I’m from Dallas, Texas.
What high school did you attend?
I went to Lake Highlands High School.
What was your favorite extracurricular activity in high school?
I avoided extracurriculars as much as possible! But, I enjoyed my school’s Spanish Club; we had some amazing field trips and events.
Why did you come to UT?
In-state tuition, and Austin is a nice place.
Why are you majoring in CS?
I initially considered being a math major, but I had a fantastic CS teacher in high school (shoutout Dr. Luman!) who led me into wanting to be a programmer. Additionally, I’m terrified of being unemployed!
Why are you in this class?
I hope to gain experience using tools for testing and collaborating on software projects. A lot of my courses at UT have focused on more theoretical areas of computer science, so I’m aiming to learn more practical knowledge. Also, one of my project partners in CS 439 gave a glowing review of this course.
How did you like the two lectures?
I’ve enjoyed them so far; I think the question-and-answer aspect keeps me alert and focused in an online learning environment.
How did you feel about the cold calling?
It seems like an effective way to get us engaged. It also helps me understand the variety of backgrounds and skill levels among students in the course.
What made you happy this week?
I planted some wildflower seeds and a cactus in my backyard! We just moved into a rental house in Austin, and the backyard was essentially a pile of dirt. I’ll keep this platform updated on my outdoor renovation projects.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
I wrote this Medium article about the current state of Venn diagrams on the first day of class. Did you know that symmetric Venn diagrams are only possible for a prime number of sets? And that we haven’t yet found a Venn diagram for 17 sets?
This is less a software engineering problem than a computational geometry problem, but researchers will need to develop and execute carefully-pruned computer searches to solve this problem.
