compsoc-freshers October 2017

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Week 4: G-Research coding challenge tonight & Bloomberg talk next Wednesday
by Thomas Denney 28 Oct '17

28 Oct '17

Hi everyone, Today we'll be hosting the *G-Research Coding Challenge*, where teams will be competing to perform sentiment analysis. Winning team members will win £50 Amazon vouchers! Make sure to register (link below). On Wednesday, in *Bloomberg's tech talk*, we'll be learning about parallelising the partition sort algorithm and how to get the most out of it. Have a great week! *Thomas and the rest of the committee* EventsG-Research Coding Challenge 2018 <https://www.facebook.com/events/222378784963112> *18:00 Saturday, 3rd Week - Room 051, Department of Computer Science* G-Research is a leading quantitative research and technology company. We apply scientific techniques to find patterns in large, noisy and real-world data sets, using the latest statistical and "big data" analysis methodologies to predict global financial markets. Please join us for our annual coding challenge where you will *compete in teams in a series of progressively more difficult sentiment analysis challenges*. This is a great chance to test your problem solving and coding skills and a *chance to win a £50 Amazon vouchers per team member* (plus prizes for runners up!). - Where: Oxford Computer Science Department, Room 051 - Date: Saturday 28th October 2017 - When: 18:00-21:00 To take part all you need is at least one laptop per team and have a development environment set up for C#, Java or Python and you must be able to provide your own internet access. Afterwards we will provide food and drinks and a chance for you to talk to our employees informally about internships, graduate roles and life at G-Research! *To register your interest, please email graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk <graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk>.* You can register alone or as part of a team of up to 4 members, if you register individually you will be allocated a team at the event. [This event replaces our usual Geek Night. Note that it begins one hour earlier than usual.] Bloomberg tech talk: Parallel partition <https://www.facebook.com/events/140611299909511> *19:00 Wednesday 4th Week - Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science* The partition algorithm is an important building block for other algorithms, especially for sorting. It seems like partition is inherently sequential but there are ways to parallelize the algorithm. This presentation shows a way to do so. It also discusses a few variations on the interface to the algorithm to show how these affect performance. Geek Night 4 <https://www.facebook.com/events/956134894534495> *19:00 Saturday 4th Week - Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science* This week, we'll be trying to implement UNIX utilities in the language of your choice. Who knew grep could be so complex? Bring your laptop for an evening of relaxing, chatting, games, coding and a selection of food and drink. Palantir tech talk: Building Secure Search at Palantir <https://www.facebook.com/events/1410719555717660> *19:00 Wednesday 5th Week - Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science* How do you design a search engine when different users only have permission to view specific documents? In this workshop we will explore how object level authorization can be used to take care of privacy in these times of Big Data. Pizza and drinks will be provided after the talk. Who we are: Today's critical institutions don't just protect public safety or provide vital goods and services - they also deal with astonishing amounts of data. At Palantir, our mission is to help the world's government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and nonprofits transform how they understand and use that data.We build software that lets organizations integrate and analyze their data so they can solve problems they couldn't before. Sponsor noticesEntrepreneur First Early Application Deadline The early application deadline to join EF's 10th cohort (beginning in April 2018) is on October 31st! Entrepreneur First are Europe's leading startup builder, and always looking for innovative, talented individuals to support in building their first technology company - they are especially really keen to bring in those who haven't previously considered founding their own startup, but who have skills and enthusiasm and just need the right environment to flourish. They're also encouraging more women to apply, and try to narrow the gender gap between male and female founders. The uniqueness of EF comes from the fact that they build companies pre-team, and pre-idea; they select individuals based on pure talent, then work with them to develop teams, ideas, technology, and help them raise funding. If this sounds like an opportunity which interests you then please please apply and you could be building your startup with us in April 2018! It's a really exciting time to be at Entrepreneur First too, as they've recently closed a $12.4 million round of funding, with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and a handful of EF alumni from earlier cohorts also investing, including the founders of Magic Pony Technology, who built the company through EF and exited eighteen months later for $150 million. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask EF's student partner Sienna Rothery <sienna.rothery(a)stcatz.ox.ac.uk>. ------------------------------ The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page <https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website <https://ox.compsoc.net/> for more information about the society. Thomas Denney President - Oxford University Computer Society president(a)ox.compsoc.net

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Week 3 newsletter: Coding contests and MS tech talk
by Edward Hart 20 Oct '17

20 Oct '17

Hi everyone, Next Wednesday, we'll be hosting our first tech talk of the term with *Don Syme of Microsoft Research*, who'll be telling us about F#, Microsoft's functional programming language. A week Saturday, we have the *G-Research Coding Challenge*, where teams will be competing to perform sentiment analysis. Winning team members will win £50 Amazon vouchers! Make sure to register (link below). Tomorrow we will be hosting our usual geek night, when we'll be looking at esoteric programming languages. If you're interested in participating in a beginner friendly programming challenge, the first round of the *UK/IE Programming Contest* <http://ukiepc.info/#home> is being hosted in the department *tomorrow*. If you are interested in taking part please contact Nick Hu <nick.hu(a)stcatz.ox.ac.uk>. You do not need to register as a team; he can allocate you to a team if need be. *Edward and the rest of the committee* EventsGeek Night 2 <https://www.facebook.com/events/346289525782943> *19:00 Saturday 2nd Week - Undergraduate Social Area* This week we'll be exploring the weird and wonderful world of esoteric languages. Use languages like Brainfuck <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck>, Befunge <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge> or Piet <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language#Piet> - or something of your own devising - to implement fiendishly simple programs like FizzBuzz and the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Bring your own laptop and we'll provide the pizza. Microsoft tech talk: The F# Path to Relaxation <https://www.facebook.com/events/533456163653843> *Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 19:00 Wednesday (Week 3)* *Abstract:* Born in a lab, matured in the enterprise, and now fully baked as an open-source, cross-platform, professionally-supported language - the F# journey has always been about reconciling the apparently irreconcilable: Functional and Objects, Types and Dynamism, Company and Openness, Linux and Windows, Android and iOS, Programming and Data, GPU and CPU, Async and Sync, Server and Client - F# finds a way. Come along and take a journey with me through the modern programming landscape and the F# approach to research, language design, interoperability, tooling and community. *Bio:* Don Syme is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, the designer and architect of the F# programming language and an F# community contributor. In 2015 he received the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for his work on programming languages. G-Research Coding Challenge 2018 <https://www.facebook.com/events/222378784963112> *Room 051, Department of Computer Science - 18:00 Saturday (Week 3)* G-Research is a leading quantitative research and technology company. We apply scientific techniques to find patterns in large, noisy and real-world data sets, using the latest statistical and "big data" analysis methodologies to predict global financial markets. Please join us for our annual coding challenge where you will *compete in teams in a series of progressively more difficult sentiment analysis challenges*. This is a great chance to test your problem solving and coding skills and a *chance to win a £50 Amazon vouchers per team member* (plus prizes for runners up!). - Where: Oxford Computer Science Department, Room 051 - Date: Saturday 28th October 2017 - When: 18:00-21:00 To take part all you need is at least one laptop per team and have a development environment set up for C#, Java or Python and you must be able to provide your own internet access. Afterwards we will provide food and drinks and a chance for you to talk to our employees informally about internships, graduate roles and life at G-Research! *To register your interest, please email graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk <graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk>.* You can register alone or as part of a team of up to 4 members, if you register individually you will be allocated a team at the event. [This event replaces our usual Geek Night. Note that it begins one hour earlier than usual.] ------------------------------ The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page <https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website <https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.

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Week 2 newsletter
by Edward Hart 16 Oct '17

16 Oct '17

Hi everyone, It was wonderful to see so many people at the Welcome Drinks last Wednesday! Sadly, we won't be seeing on you Tuesday – the *Google talk has been postponed* because our speaker had to drop out (we'll be announcing a new date shortly). If you want to get your tech talk fix, there is a *Bloomberg talk* tomorrow on analysing tweets using machine learning. At this week's *Geek Night*, we'll be playing around with esoteric programming languages and, thanks to a generous donation from Sauyon Lee, we will also have a number of cheese available for tasting. Have a great week! *Edward and the rest of the committee* EventsGeek Night 2 <https://www.facebook.com/events/346289525782943> *19:00 Saturday 2nd Week – Undergraduate Social Area* This week we'll be exploring the weird and wonderful world of esoteric languages. Use languages like Brainfuck <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck>, Befunge <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge> or Piet <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language#Piet>—or something of your own devising—to implement fiendishly simple programs like FizzBuzz and the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Bring your own laptop and we'll provide the pizza 😉. Other eventsBloomberg tech talk: Finding Signals in Tweets with ML/NLP at Bloomberg – Lunch Provided *13:00 Tuesday 2nd Week – Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science* Talk Abstract: In the current social media era, Twitter has proven itself an indispensable source of information as we frequently see information posted or shared on Twitter become big market movers later on. Due to the mass volume, directly consuming the raw contents without any kind of refinements is undesirable, and, more importantly, the vast majority of the contents are irrelevant to what interests our clients. In this talk, we will discuss how to refine raw contents from Twitter and extract fruitful signals, e.g. Trending Topics, Company Sentiments, Social Velocity, etc from them. Furthermore, we will discuss challenges during developments of the business deliverables and how we solve them via the use of ML/NLP techniques. Finally, we will go over some applications which are built on top of these signals and used broadly by professionals in the finance domain. Iat Chong Chan – Profile: Iat Chong Chan is a software developer in Bloomberg Machine Learning Team. His interests mostly lie in the intersection of Computational Linguistics, Machine Learning, and High Performance Computing. He has been working on a scalable infrastructure to infer topics of social contents ingested to Bloomberg by statistical models, and also a set of tools to maintain and improve these classifiers. Iat Chong also leads the NLP guild inside Bloomberg, to advocate the use of ML/NLP techniques for new business problems. Before he joined the company, he was a MSc student in Dept. of Computer Science at University of Oxford, supervised by Prof. Stephen Pulman and Yishu Miao, and worked on building a better input method on small hand-held devices by a novel Bayesian Network with Variational Inference. ------------------------------ The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page <https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website <https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.

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Week 1 newsletter: Welcome drinks and the Wikipedia game
by Edward Hart 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Hi everyone, Firstly, welcome to all our new members! Several hundred of you signed up over at the Freshers' Fair and we're really looking forward to meeting you all over the coming year. Thanks to all of those who helped out on the CompSoc stall. To everyone else, welcome back! We send out a weekly e-mail, but feel free to like us on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/oxcompsoc/>. This term, we've got talks from Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Palantir, G-Research, Metaswitch and Facebook, along with regular geek nights, a coding challenge, and a LAN party. Our introductory Python course, Learn to Code, will be back in Hilary. *Edward and the rest of the committee* EventsIntroduction to Oxford University Computer Society <https://www.facebook.com/events/343011032777780/> *7pm Wednesday 1st Week - Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science* CompSoc is one of the oldest computer societies at any British university, and this year we're looking forward to welcoming our 40th intake of freshers! We welcome anyone passionate about computers, programming, or anything geeky and we're always happy to point beginners in the right direction. Regardless of whether you're a fresher or an existing member we'd love to welcome you to our society. We're holding a drinks and pizza reception to give you the chance to meet the committee and existing members before our first talk in week 2. The event is open to everyone and we'll have membership forms available if you're interested in joining (£3 for an annual membership, or £5 for life). Geek Night 1 <https://www.facebook.com/events/132785950704505> *Undergraduate Social Area - 19:00 Saturday (1st Week)* Geek Night meets Wikipedia: In the "Wikipedia Game" you click the random article link and aim for another Wikipedia page in the fewest clicks possible. We're going to be writing bots to play the game and compete with one another, but without downloading the entirety of Wikipedia. Bring your own laptop and we'll provide the pizza :). Please see here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Game> if you've never played the Wikipedia Game before. Other eventsBloomberg CodeCon Qualifiers - 13th October 2017 CodeCon is coming to the University of Oxford on the 13th of October! CodeCon is a live programming contest developed in-house at Bloomberg. Push your programming and problem solving skills to the limit against the clock to win the title of Bloomberg CodeCon champion against your peers across the UK and Europe! Your school's top winners will be invited to our Bloomberg CodeCon Global Finals in our London office in January 2018 for a chance to win an amazing prize and compete against the best students from Europe and the US! Please make sure you *register* with your *university email address* and *bring your laptop*. - The event will take place at: Saïd Business School Seminar Room A Park End Street OX1 1HP - Kick-off at 6.30pm, come early to get a seat! - Food and refreshments will be provided! - To sign up, please follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/ydd45ygr The Bloomberg CodeCon team look forward to seeing you there. Become a Microsoft Student Partner today! If you are considering a technical career at Microsoft, the Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) programme is for you! Get a head start over the competition and join the growing number of student ambassadors who partner with Microsoft to run hacks, tech talks and other technology focused events on campus. We will be looking out for outstanding MSPs to join our global team. *Reasons to be an MSP:* - Build your network - CV worthy experience - Expand your technical knowledge - Training from industry experts - Access to professional courses <https://academy.microsoft.com/en-us/professional-program/> for free - Publish blogs to our developer page <https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/> - Opportunities for international travel <https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/2016/11/21/a-view-fr…> - Enhanced recruitment opportunities This opportunity is exclusively available to technical students at Oxford, Cambridge, UCL and Imperial. We have between 10-20 MSPs at each University who work together to organise events on topics they are passionate about... All with technical speakers, promotional goodies and pizza provided by Microsoft. If you are ready to join the team send us your CV <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/mailto:embyle@microsoft.com?subject=%3cIns…>. We will then invite you to a 20 minute Skype interview to understand more about you, your passions, as well as your motivations for applying. *The programme will start in October 2017*, with a trip to our Microsoft UK HQ in early November to meet the team, your MSP peers and to start training! *Send your CV to apply here <embyle@microsoft.com?subject=%3cInsert%20Name%3e,%20University%20of%20Oxford%20-%20MSP%20Application>* ------------------------------ The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page <https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website <https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.

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Week 0 Newsletter: Welcome back!
by Thomas Denney 03 Oct '17

03 Oct '17

Hi all, Good morning, and a warm welcome to all our new and returning members! This week we'll be at Freshers' Fair before we get started with the term's events next week. The committee will be on the stall, but if you're interested in catching freshers' flu early helping sign up new members and explaining the society to freshers then feel free to email us <committee(a)ox.compsoc.net>. Next week we'll be hosting a welcome drinks + snacks session on Wednesday evening to welcome new freshers to the society, before our first Geek Night of the term on the Saturday, and our first talk in second week. This term we have talks from Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Facebook, Palantir, and Metaswitch scheduled, along with a G-Research coding challenge. Have a great week! Thomas and the rest of the committee EventsIntroduction to Oxford University Computer Society <https://www.facebook.com/events/343011032777780/> *7pm Wednesday 1st Week • Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science* CompSoc is one of the oldest computer societies at any British university, and this year we're looking forward to welcoming our 40th intake of freshers! We welcome anyone passionate about computers, programming, or anything geeky and we're always happy to point beginners in the right direction. Regardless of whether you're a fresher or an existing member we'd love to welcome you to our society. We're holding a drinks + pizza reception to give you the chance to meet the committee and existing members before our first talk in week 2. The event is open to everyone and we'll have membership forms available if you're interested in joining (£3 for an annual membership, or £5 for life). Sponsor NoticesBloomberg CodeCon Qualifiers - 13th October 2017 <http://tinyurl.com/ydd45ygr> CodeCon is coming to your university on the 13th of October! CodeCon is a live programming contest developed in-house at Bloomberg. Push your programming and problem solving skills to the limit against the clock to win the title of Bloomberg CodeCon champion against your peers across the UK and Europe! Your school's top winners will be invited to our Bloomberg CodeCon Global Finals in our London office in January 2018 for a chance to win an amazing prize and compete against the best students from Europe and the US! Please make sure you register with your university email address and bring your laptop. The event will take place at: Said Business School Seminar Room A Park End Street OX1 1HP - Kick-off at 6.30pm, come early to get a seat! - Food and refreshments will be provided! - To sign up, please follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/ydd45ygr We look forward to seeing you there. Bloomberg CodeCon Team Entrepreneur First Student Partner opportunity <https://boards.greenhouse.io/workforef/jobs/599587#.WdNiZUyZOV5> We're on the lookout for a Student Partner to help us change the way the most talented students think about their careers. At Entrepreneur First we specialise in supporting people to build technically defensible companies from scratch and we're looking for ambitious Student Partners to help us inspire and engage the best student technologists to build a startup with EF. This is a great opportunity if you're interested in tech startups and either see yourself founding one or working for one in the future. *The role* You'll be helping us grow EF's brand at your university and encourage the best student engineers to start companies. This is a community-facing role and you'll be the eyes and ears 'on the ground' - gathering first-hand insights about our customers and helping them to kick-start their startup journeys with EF. You'll be focused on building a technical community and running tech and startup-focused meetups and events. You'll play a key role in driving applications to our EFX Internship programme enabling students to experience working for a startup first hand. For more information click here. <https://boards.greenhouse.io/workforef/jobs/599587#.WdNiZUyZOV5> ------------------------------ The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page <https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc>, Twitter <https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc>, or visit our website <https://ox.compsoc.net/> for more information about the society. Thomas Denney President - Oxford University Computer Society president(a)ox.compsoc.net

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compsoc-freshers October 2017