Computing is one of the only scientific fields which was once female-dominated. In the 30s and 40s, women made up the bulk of the workforce doing complex, tedious calculations in the fields including ballistics, astrophysics, aeronautics (think Hidden Figures) and code-breaking. Engineers themselves found that the female computers were far more reliable than themselves in doing such calculations [9]. As computing machines became available, there was no precedent set for the gender of a computer operator, and so the women previously doing the computing became the computer operators [10].

However, this was not to last. As computing became commercialised in the 50s, the skill required for computing work was starting to be recognised. As written in [1]:

“Software company System Development Corp. (SDC) contracted psychologists William Cannon and Dallis Perry to create an aptitude assessment for optimal programmers. Cannon and Perry interviewed 1,400 engineers — 1,200 of them men — and developed a “vocational interest scale,” a personality profile to predict the best potential programmers. Unsurprisingly given their male-dominated test group, Cannon and Perry’s assessment disproportionately identified men as the ideal candidates for engineering jobs. In particular, the test tended to eliminate extroverts and people who have empathy for others. Cannon and Perry’s paper concluded that typical programmers “don’t like people,” forming today’s now pervasive stereotype of a nerdy, anti-social coder.”

A blog post about ideas.

Ideation is the formation of an idea, but how do we ideate? 

The route of the word is “to see”, so when we have an idea we see something. In that moment of realization, we hold on to something quite abstract. Some describe it as a click or pattern or insight. This “seeing” is with the mind, however, not the eyes. Idea also implies sentiment or direction – a path one might say. It’s this last point that resonates with me most. When we are lost, in the sea of thoughts, most of the time the consequences are immediate (no consciousness required). However, sometimes we must pause and ideate. Our path, the next step, is unclear. 

Recently I have had the opportunity to get a closer look at the submission, review and promotion cycle for a typical academic paper. It was a great learning experience and led to an increase in the number and of research papers, news articles, and reviews I read in preparation. However, on multiple occasions, I did think “I wish I could watch a 2 min video to explain this”. That got me thinking, why couldn’t I and should I be able to?

Tokyo 2020 is now firmly in our rearview mirror, and I for one will be sad to be deprived of the opportunity to wake up at 4AM to passionately cheer on someone I’ve never heard of in an event I know nothing about as they go for Gold. The heyday of amateurism in the Olympics may be long  gone, but it’s never been better for the amateur fan, with 24/7, on-demand, coverage, unprecedented access to the athletes via social media and remote working offering the opportunity to watch the games on a second screen without worrying about one’s boss noticing (not that I would ever engage in such an irresponsible practice, in case my Supervisor is reading this…).

To indulge both my post-Olympics melancholy and my addiction to sports trivia, I’ve trawled the internet to find some interest factoids related to the Summer Games and present them below for your mild enjoyment: