COS 109 Survey Results 2014

Sun Sep 14 08:27:27 EDT 2014

Here are the survey results, undoubtedly with double counting and transcription errors. With 58 out of 71 people heard from:

Your year:

19 frosh, 16 sophomores, 13 juniors, 26 seniors, and half a dozen community auditors.

Your major or likely or possible major: a great spread of departments. Don't take this as exactly accurate; some people said nothing, while others named two or more options.

11 ECO, 10 HIS, 8 ENG, 6 WWS, 4 POL, 3 SOC, 3 PSY, 3 CLA, 2 UNK, 2 COM, 2 ANT, 1 SLL, 1 REL, 1 PHI, 1 NES, 1 MUS, 1 GER, 1 GEO, 1 FRE, 1 EAS, 1 EAS, 1 ART, 1 ARC,

Your life outside class, e.g., sports, music, theater, service, job, sleep, ...:

Lots of varsity and club sports, a wide variety of service activities, music in its myriad forms, writing in various venues, plenty of performing arts like theater and dance, a variety of jobs and work, and much wishful thinking about getting enough sleep. A word of warning for anyone with heavy time commitments, especially if they involve travel: there are weekly problem sets and labs in 109, and you only get two extensions, so please plan ahead.

Your computer experience:

a lot 3, some 10, a little 34, none 15
What kind of computer(s) do you have here?
PC 13, Mac 52
The Mac fraction was 83% last year; this year it's 80%, pretty much the same.

What kind of cell phone(s) do you have?

iPhone 50, other smartphone 6, regular phone 5
Android outsells iPhone worldwide by a large margin, but not locally.

Who is your cell phone provider?

Verizon 32, AT&T 20, T-Mobile 6, Sprint 3, other 1.
Pretty stable for Verizon and AT&T; T-Mobile seems to have picked up some.

Do you have an e-book reader like a Kindle?

Kindle 8, Nook 4, other 4
The Kindle number was 19 was last year.

Do you have a tablet like an iPad?

iPad 16, other 4
The others are still small players.

Are there any topics you would especially like to hear about in class?

Intellectual property, privacy and security, hacking, business and finance, viruses, creating web sites, applications in various domains, various economic questions, and lots of others. Several mentioned programming, which, as a programmer, I'm happy to see. We'll touch on most of these, with considerable detail on some, and if people ask questions at the right moment, we can go deeper.