By Eshaan Joshi
Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science is known for its difficult classes, complex topics, and irreverent faculty. Amidst all of this, some faculty, students, and alumni like to have fun with the field.
They created an organization called the Special Interest Group on Harry Query Bovik (SIGBOVIK), which presents the most useless, entertaining, or downright silly science to a crowd of Carnegie Mellon students and local onlookers, and this year’s edition of this tradition was held on April 5, drawing at least 50 spectators.
SIGBOVIK is held every year by the Association for Computational Heresy and allows students of the field, of any level of expertise, to publish. The conference is hosted at Carnegie Mellon.
This year’s edition was held in Rashid Auditorium in Gates. Here’s a brief selection of papers by the student presenters and the topics they covered.
The Gender of Programs
Tulip Amalie considered the complex issues of gender and the complexities of social constructs, this paper aimed to try to discover and analyze the gender of various computer programs.
Prediction Software
Eleftheria Chatziargyriou and Konstantinos Kanavouras presented their work on random models and predictive theories. By completely ignoring the input, and just generating a random output that is not based on the input in any way, this project was able to, theoretically, predict anything correctly.
Remedial Lecture
Robotics Institute professor Jim McCann made sure that anyone who failed C@CM the first time was prepared to pass it using props, keys, hats, and boxes. He ended with a short demonstration on how to submit your homework.
Randomization
A.M. Lyons and two authors unnamed were presenting their further research into the field of randomization, with the blessing of the RAND Corporation. With how much our current youth (of about 10 years ago, according to the speaker) have embraced “rawr lol xd random” humor, is it possible to harness that energy and information for more efficient randomization algorithms and random number generators?
AI Companions
Mehul Agarwal and Cheng Ma presented a paper outlining a new startup focusing on glasses that allow the wearer to flirt with people through AI advice. Assuming this project is a success, it should help people have conversation without fear of messing up due to social pressures.
Strange Combinations in “Infinite Craft”
Kevin Gomez and Ryan Pitasky focused on the strange and unexplainable behaviors of the video game “Infinite Craft,” as well as how to optimize gameplay. With experimental methods, they were able to find non-intuitive combinations, strange trigger phrases, and other quirks of the system.
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