Meeting Notes for 14 March

Present: Senem, Joel, Mark, Ken, Tom, Adam, Marge

quarknet.org

e-Labs

• Joel removed the CAPTCHA from the password reset page because it was broken and not really that useful. No one raised objections
• Despite deployment of code that worked on i2u2-dev, guest logins on i2u2-prod aren't SSL-enabled. He'll have to figure out what he missed an try again next round.
• Steady progress through the code thicket of making teacher groups bold on the Student Groups page.

Cosmic

It's Muon Week! Mark reports lower levels of participation this year - 10 groups so far, compared to 40 by the end of the week last year. At a CR Fellows videocon yesterday, someone suggested that proposing a Time-of-Flight measurement on top of the traditional Flux measurement may have discouraged some users, since a ToF Study is more complex and requires using the e-Lab. Ken also suggests that this year's odd calendar of spring breaks and Easter might be a factor. Marge suggests following up with past participants to inquire about their participation this year; Ken and Mark agree.

CMS

Tom has a couple of major milestones to present.

• He has a working mockup (screenshot) of a self-contained CMS data exercise designed for use on tablets. It's similar to CMS Data Express, but more fully-featured. It uses the same data from the CMS Masterclass, but "mixed" differently. Tom, Ken and Marge agree that it would make a good addition to the Masterclass tool set, especially when there isn't enough time for a full CMS session. The app cannot pool data for multi-user histograms (yet, at least), but a comparison to an instructor's e-Lab histogram would still be useful.

• He's created a Higgs analysis based on the work of a CMS group using a subset of the 2011/2012 data set (html export of Jupyter Notebook). Tom converted this subset to .csv format for use in a JNB that nicely demonstrates the Higgs discovery. With this in place, it's clear that we have the raw materials needed for a Higgs Masterclass. Ken envisions a WZ--Higgs MC, where the primary focus is on W and Z events, but advanced users can "graduate" to a separate set of Higgs data when finished with the W/Z portion.

Masterclasses

Earlier this week Ken and Marla Glover (and students) practiced a W-boson session using the CMS Masterclass data by identifying muons and missing E_T and using a Google sheet to calculate transverse mass and build a M_T plot. They have a videocon scheduled for Friday to check on its progress; Ken notes that it's an interesting departure from the standard Z-based use of the data set.

Jupyter

Adam has run into the same problem of JupyterHub making student logins difficult. He's found that a local Jupyter installation is almost always the easiest long-term solution. Binder is increasingly reliable, though students can save their progress only locally while using it.

Joel will attempt a Binder installation on i2u2-jupyter and develop procedures for using it in the classroom. In the meantime, anyone with an ND account can obtain a login to the JupyterHub server on i2u2-jupyter for testing and development.

-- Main.JoelG - 2018-03-14

Comments

• Screenshot of CMS data exercise app: