computer science

Ruthe Farmer

Ruthe Farmer is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ruthe Farmer rather than just read about it. In short: Ruthe Farmer is an American policymaker and activist. She is focused on inclusion and leveraging existing infrastructure to scale change for girls' participation in technology and engineering.

Key takeaways

Ruthe Farmer belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ruthe Farmer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ruthe Farmer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ruthe Farmer is an American policymaker and activist. She is focused on inclusion and leveraging existing infrastructure to scale change for girls' participation in technology and engineering. She is founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund and also serves as the Chief Evangelist for CSforAll and she was a senior policy advisor for tech inclusion at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Obama administration and Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Background Farmer attended Lewis & Clark College between 1988 and 1992, where she received a B.A. in Communications and German. She attended the Saïd Business School at Oxford University between 2007 and 2008, where she received a M.B.A. in Social Entrepreneurship.

Career Farmer worked for the Girl Scouts between 2001 and 2007 as a program manager for STEM education and was a founding committee member of the Oregon Robotics and Tournament Outreach Program, a successful FIRST Lego League program. She was chair of the 2012 Computer Science Education Week and subsequently became the Director of Strategic Initiatives for the NCWIT between 2008 and 2016. Farmer was named a "Champion of Change for Technology Inclusion" by the White House in 2013 and won the Anita Borg Institute's 2014 Social Impact ABIE award, and was named among the "Forty Over 40 Women to Watch in America" in 2015. Between 2016 through the end of the Obama administration in January 2017, Farmer was the Senior Policy Advisor for Tech Inclusion at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with a focus on implementing the Obama administration's CS for All initiative with an emphasis on including under-represented groups. She now (2018) serves as the Chief Evangelist for CSforALL. In 2020, during the pandemic, she launched the Last Mile Education Fund to respond to the needs of low-income students pursuing degrees in tech and engineering fields.

References

External links Gilpin, Lyndsey (2014-10-21). "Ruthe Farmer: NCWIT strategist. Computer science advocate. Tech Dumbledore". TechRepublic. (2018-03-07). "The Pipeline Protectors: 33 Women Educating the Next Generation of STEM Talent". TechRepublic Schwarz, Sarah (2017-10-19) "CSforALL Announces Computer Science Pledges from Over 170 Organizations". EdWeek

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ruthe Farmer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ruthe Farmer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ruthe Farmer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ruthe Farmer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ruthe Farmer

In research: Ruthe Farmer appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ruthe Farmer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ruthe Farmer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alumni of Saïd Business School, American nonprofit executives, American women nonprofit executives, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ruthe Farmer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ruthe Farmer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ruthe Farmer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ruthe Farmer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ruthe Farmer in simple terms?

Ruthe Farmer is an American policymaker and activist. She is focused on inclusion and leveraging existing infrastructure to scale change for girls' participation in technology and engineering.

Why does Ruthe Farmer matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ruthe Farmer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ruthe Farmer.