Dundee Science Centre Pi
As part of the 2015 Women in Science Festival, St Andrews graduate Dr James McDonagh, PhD student Rosanna Alderson of the University’s School of Chemistry, Dr Daniel Barker and Dr Heleen Plaisier of the School of Biology took five Raspberry Pi computers to Dundee on Saturday 14th March – also known as Pi Day. These miniature low-cost computers were loaded with 4273π, a customised version of the Raspbian Linux operating system developed at St Andrews for teaching and learning bioinformatics.
Members of the public visiting the Dundee Science Centre, aged from around 5 to 45, were guided through Python-based games, programming and bioinformatics analyses. Several children wrote their first script using Bash shell scripting. Staff were delighted the clear ability of a wide rang of ages to readily pick up programming and other computational skills.
According to visitors, the workshop was “easy to follow”, “the activities could not be any better” and “it was very easy to understand”. Two adult visitors commented: “Demonstrators were very informative” and “Hope to read some of the Raspberry Pi books/articles with better understanding now”.
This event demonstrates that although small, the Raspberry Pi has the power to successfully engage the general public with computer programming and university level computational research. The event’s ability to attract a wide range of ages is proof of the Pi’s versatility – Pi to the people!