Funding, News and Announcements

Introduction to Programming with Python for Humanities and Social Sciences
26, 27, 28 February, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic / 1330-1530hrs NL

Python can be used in many humanities and social sciences workflows, and it is an easy and fun language to learn. This introductory 3-day, 6-hour course will walk you through the basics of programming in Python starting at the beginner's level. We will cover the main language features – variables and data types, conditionals, lists, for/while loops, list comprehensions, dictionaries, writing functions, and working with external libraries, doing many exercises along the way. In the second part we will take a look at some of the libraries in more details, including pandas for working with large tables, simple plotting with matplotlib, and few others. No prerequisites. This workshop is eligible to count toward the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities (cc:DH/HN). If you’re interested in learning more about the certificate, visit https://ccdhhn.ca/. 

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Introduction to Programming with R for Humanities and Social Sciences
26, 27, 28 February, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic / 1330-1530hrs NL

R is a free and open-source programming language for statistical computing, modelling, and graphics, with a large collection of packages and a great community. It is extremely popular in many academic fields, including the humanities. This introductory course will get you started in a friendly, non-intimidating atmosphere over 3 days. We will cover the basics of the language, learn how to write functions, use the popular packages from the tidyverse, and plot and analyse data. By the end of the workshop, you should be self-sufficient and able to use and keep learning R by yourself. No prerequisites. This workshop is eligible to count toward the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities (cc:DH/HN). If you’re interested in learning more about the certificate, visit https://ccdhhn.ca/. 

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The Why's and How's of Machine Learning
5 March, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic | 1330-1530hrs NL

What do you need to make a machine learning project successful? How can you make smart decisions about setup and execution? How should you hire and support the staff working on the project? We hope to provide clear, thoughtful answers to these, and other common questions to get you thinking about whether machine learning is a technology that you and your company or group should think about investing in. We will discuss topics like data collection, the trade-offs involved in choosing a model, and what to expect from a successful project, as well as how to salvage useful by-products and skills when projects don’t go as planned. This is a beginner session oriented to business owners and project managers curious to learn more about machine learning, or who may have an idea that involves machine learning and want to know where to begin.

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C as a Second Language
13 March, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600 Atlantic | 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL

A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to write user-defined functions for engineering packages such as Fluent, then this workshop is for you. Prerequisite: familiarity with another programming language. 

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Machine Learning Basics
19 March, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic | 1330-1530hrs NL

Are you curious about machine learning, but not sure where to start, or if the discipline is for you? This beginner session will offer a survey and explanation of several methods used to make machines learn. From simple models like Naive Bayes, Regression and Decision Trees to an introduction to Support Vector Machines and Feed-Forward Neural Networks. This talk is geared to be approachable to a novice audience, curious about machine learning, but not necessarily math or computer science majors. Methods and techniques will be explained using metaphors, examples, and clear language, without diving too deeply into the math and calculus on which these techniques are based.

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C++ as a Second Language
27 March, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600 Atlantic | 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL

A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C++, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C++, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to extend packages like OpenFOAM which are written in C++, then this workshop is for you. C++ was designed as an extension of the C language but has its own distinct idiom or style. This workshop assumes that you already know C to the level reached in the ACENET workshop "C as a Second Language".

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Introduction to Neural Network Architecture
2 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic | 1330-1630hrs NL

Have you wondered how machine learning models can suddenly do so many different types of work? How is it that machines can learn things like language, vision and translation in such a short amount of time, and what has helped drive these kinds of improvements? The obvious answers - big data and big processors - are only part of the story, and to understand the full picture, we need to take a closer look at the models driving the AI revolution. This talk is aimed at people who are familiar with the basics of feed-forward neural networks, and will involve an in-depth explanation of how information is represented for machines to learn from, how machines can make sense of information, and the challenges presented.

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Introduction to Natural Language Processing
16 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic | 1330-1630hrs NL

How do computers understand language? It seems impossible that zeroes and ones could ever add up to words that humans can understand, but machine language has come a long way in the past few years. Let us take you behind the code to explain how machines simulate language comprehension, and why it’s a far more complicated problem than “bonjour = hello”. This talk is aimed at an audience who is not necessarily familiar with computers or language comprehension, but would like a primer to the field, and what it can realistically do. We will explain natural language processing from the perspective of machines that cannot understand words, but capture semantic meaning by processing data.

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Fortran as a Second Language
24 April, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600 Atlantic | 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL

Fortran, one of the initial high-level programming languages, continues to be an excellent option for high-performance computing due to its superb performance. The newer versions of Fortran offer many modern features, including object-oriented programming capabilities to programmers. This course will cover some of these features. Prerequisite: familiarity with another programming language.

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