Feedback from the learners was generally good on the material, the venue and the structure. The most common complaint was that it was hard to follow along at times, and I think there are several areas where we’ll be able to improve the “flow” for future events.

Notably, this was the first bootcamp I’ve attended at which nobody found the room too crowded or the wrong temperature. Result, Newcastle!

Here are the good and bad feedback points. Some points were close duplicates, and I’ve put the additional ones in brackets (e.g. Python was cited three times).

You can find links to the material we used on the page about the bootcamp.

* A
* B
  * 1
  * 2
* C
  * 3

into an HTML list like this:

<ul>
  <li>A</li>
  <li>B
    <ul>
      <li>1</li>
      <li>2</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>C
    <ul>
      <li>3</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

so it would display like this:

• A
• B
  • 1
  • 2
• C
  • 3

My solution is shown in the video below; the code follows.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

import sys

def do_inner(lines, current):
    need_to_start = True
    need_to_close = False
    while (current < len(lines)) and \
          lines[current].startswith('  * '):
        if need_to_start:
            print '  <ul>'
            need_to_start = False
        text = lines[current].lstrip('  * ').rstrip()
        print '  <li>' + text + '</li>'
        need_to_close = True
        current += 1
    if need_to_close:
        print '  </ul>'
    return current

def do_outer(lines):
    print '<ul>'
    current = 0
    while current < len(lines):
        assert lines[current].startswith('* ')
        text = lines[current].lstrip('* ').rstrip()
        print '<li>' + text
        current = do_inner(lines, current+1)
        print '</li>'
    print '</ul>'

lines = sys.stdin.readlines()
do_outer(lines)

In 2009, the Menhaden Technical Committee updated its methodology for estimating the menhaden population—something it does every five years—and then ran the menhaden catch data through a new computer model. The results weren’t much different: although the numbers of menhaden were declining, the estimated number of eggs produced by spawning female menhaden was at the target level, so according to the reference point, menhaden weren’t being overfished.

Shortly thereafter, a colleague of Jim Uphoff’s, a biologist named Alexei Sharov, got hold of the computer model that had been updated by NOAA scientists. Going through the code line by line, Sharov, one of Maryland’s representatives on the Technical Committee, found a fundamental miscalculation buried inside the model. Uphoff, meanwhile, studied the methodology of the code and discovered that NOAA had both underestimated the amount of fish killed by the industry and overestimated the spawning potential. Sharov brought these two mistakes to his peers on the committee, and it was agreed that corrections needed to be made.

Several months later, after the model had finished running a second time, the science finally caught up with what Jim Price and the anglers had been saying for decades: even using the lax reference points developed by the ASMFC, menhaden had been subject to overfishing in thirty-two of the past fifty-four years. When the assessment was then peer reviewed by a group of international scientists, the reviewers deemed that the reference point currently in use for menhaden—8 percent of maximum spawning potential—was not sufficiently safe or precautionary.

Furthermore, the number of menhaden swimming in the Atlantic had declined by 88 percent since 1983—to a level so low that it caused George Lapointe, former commissioner of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, to have what he called an “oh shit moment.”

If anyone knows more about the “fundamental miscalculation”, I’d be grateful for a summary.