Stephen Tierney

Sydney, Australia

Lecturer, data scientist and software engineer.

Currently at The University of Sydney where I teach statistics, data science and machine learning.

Recent Work

Enhancing Programming Ability with Playful Learning and Karel

22/11/2024

Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2024 about our use of Karel to increase in confidence, interest and ultimately ability in programming.
Video here.

Wayne Lonergan Award for Outstanding Leadership in Teaching

6/11/2024

Alison Wong and I were awarded the University of Sydney Business School (USBS) Wayne Lonergan Award, which is the most competitive teaching award in the school and is accompanied with a $10,000 AUD prize. We were awarded for leading significant initiatives in modernising programming education, which has impacted over 10,000 enrolments in courses we have coordinated and over 7,000 enrolments in other courses.

Update: Visualisations and Generalisations for Two Candles, One Cake

28/10/2024

I've updated past work on the Two Candles, One Cake problem by providing new visualisations and generalisation ability.

Update: Too Many Guns

1/10/2024

I've updated the Too Many Guns site to use MapLibre and partial property updates. The later change removes the need for client side callbacks.

Playful Extra-Curricular Learning In Programming Education

26/07/2024

Alison Wong and I presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about our project using Karel to help students visualise code execution and encourage students to practise programming.

Playful Extra-Curricular Learning In Programming Education

14/05/2024

I spoke at a Business Analytics 'Brown Bag' with Alison Wong about our project using Karel to o help students visualise code execution and encourage students to practise and develop their programming skills.

2023 Educational Innovation Award

3/11/2023

I received the Educational Innovation Award in the category 'Transform assessment and feedback practices' for my feed-forward assessment design in QBUS5010 Introduction to Dashboarding.

Assurance of Learning Through Testing

18/8/2023

Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2023 about our approach to assurance of learning for automatically marked assessments.

Collaborative Programming in the Classroom: Approaches and Insights

18/8/2023

Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2023 about realtime collaborative programming in a university education context.

Winner: Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant

7/8/2023

Alison Wong and I were awarded a Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant to the value of $5000 for the support the design, deployment, and evaluation of a games-based, playful, or simulated learning intervention.

Engaging Students as Collaborative Partners: A Reflective Approach to Topic Selection

31/05/2023

I co-presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about a reflective approach to students as partners that was developed for QBUS5010 Intro to Dashboarding and Data Visualisation. The approach was designed and deployed by Andrew Cram, Enosh Yeboah, Alison Casey and myself.

Promoted to Senior Lecturer

1/1/2023

I was promoted from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer in the 2022 promotions round. The position is equivalent to Associate Professor in the US.

Toolbox & Innovator Award

17/11/2022

As a team, Alison Wong, Priyanka Cheema and myself were awarded the University of Sydney Business School (USBS) Toolbox & Innovator Award, which recognises high quality, novel teaching practices and exceptional contributions to the USBS teaching community.

Dynamic Pictures for Greater Information Engagement

28/09/2022

I co-presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about embedding dynamic and interactive visualisations in learning material using plotly.

Detecting and Reducing Academic Misconduct in Programming Assessments

28/09/2022

Priyanka Cheema and I presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about detecting and reducing academic misconduct in an introductory programming unit.

QBUS5010: Intro to Dashboarding and Data Visualisation

1/8/2022

I designed and developed this introductory dashboarding unit with assistance from Ardi Mirzaei. Students learn how dashboards systems work, how they are built and to analyse dashboard designs using principles of visual analytics. The students use plotly Dash to implement their dashboards.

Frame Game Solver

21/7/2022

I wrote a proof of concept solver for John Siracusa's Frame Game. I created an interactive dashboard and wrote an overview of how it works.

Two Candles, One Cake

16/7/2022

I solved the 'Two Candles, One Cake' problem using Python. Symbolic, numeric and simulation solutions are provided.

Dynamic Pictures to Support Learning in Business Analytics

27/06/2022

Co-authored blog post on interactive elements of BUSS6002.

Optimal Diagnosis Strategies: Lessons from Wordle

18/3/2022

I spoke at a Business Analytics 'Brown Bag' seminar on wordle strategies and the broader applications for diagnoses and sequential experimental design.

Wordle Solver

23/1/2022

I wrote a fast solver for wordle written in Python. This package offers multiple solving strategies and empirical comparison of each.

At the Turn of the Tide – Teaching Python in Real-Time at Scale

17/11/2021

Alison Wong and I presented at the University of Sydney Business School Learning and Teaching Forum about our innovative approach to teaching online.

SCD4X Support in ESPHome

20/10/2021

I added support for the SCD4X CO2 sensor to ESPHome. Pull request on Github.

LTR390 Support in ESPHome

20/10/2021

I added support for the LTR390 UV and ambient light sensor to ESPHome. Pull request on Github.

Python + Ed: code for collaborative learning

16/09/2021

I was interviewed by the USYD Co-Design Research Group about our innovative approach to teaching online.

At the Turn of the Tide – Teaching Python in Real-Time at Scale

10/09/2021

Alison Wong and I presented at the Education track of PyCon AU 2021 about our innovative approach to teaching online.

PMSA003I Support in ESPHome

18/08/2021

I added support for the PMSA003I particulate matter sensor to ESPHome. Pull request on Github.

Efficient Sparse Subspace Clustering by Nearest Neighbour Filtering

1/8/2021

KNN filtering reduces computation requirements for Subspace Clustering. Theorertical justification is provided and empirically validated. View on Google Scholar. I was responsible for conceptualization, methodology, investigation, software, validation, writing - original draft.

SHT4X Support in ESPHome

19/5/2021

I added support for the SHT4X temperature and humidity sensor to ESPHome. Pull request on Github.

QBUS5011: Introduction to Programming

1/3/2021

I designed and devleped this introductory programming unit. The unit teaches programming with Python and covers traditional programming topics such as OOP and data structures, through to everyday business tasks such as handling and visualising data.

Forecasting website

27/10/2020

Andrey Vasnev and I presented at ISF 2020 about the Forecast Lab, which provides easily accessible economic and financial forecasts.

Top teachers should have a 50 per cent pay rise, expert says

10/10/2021

This Sydney Morning Herald article uses visualiations from my 'Teacher Pay Comparison' dashboard.

Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies (Higher Education)

14/04/2021

I completed the Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies (Higher Education). The 1 year course is designed to develop scholarly, research-led approaches to teaching while engaging in activities and tasks aimed at cultivating critical reflection about higher education.

Fellow of the HEA

10/03/2021

On 10th March 2021 I was admitted as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. This accreditation is in recognition of attainment against the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education.

binsmooth

13/7/2020

I wrote a Python implementation of 'Better Estimates from Binned Income Data'. This technique allows distributions to be estimated from binned data.

Teacher Pay Comparison

16/6/2020

I made a supplemental dashboard to accompany submission to 'Valuing the teaching profession' inquiry. The dashboard uses plot.ly Dash and the code is available on Github.

Robust Functional Manifold Clustering

2/4/2020

We extend subspace clustering to data that represents functions and curves. View on Google Scholar.

Too Many Guns

3/10/2019

I recreated this Greens NSW website using Dash. Code on Github.

dash-multi

21/4/2019

I wrote a wrapper for Dash to support multi page apps.

jitcache

7/2/2019

I wrote a Python package for function caching that prevents re-entrant calls.

Selective Multi-Source Total Variation Image Restoration

23/11/2015

We show that fusing multiple noisy images under a total variation penalty improves reconstruction. This idea can be selectively applied to individual pixels of each source image in the case of corrupted sections of images. View on Google Scholar.

Low Rank Sequential Subspace Clustering

12/7/2015

We show that forcing the affinity matrix of SpatSC to be low-rank improves performance. View on Google Scholar.

Affinity Pansharpening and Image Fusion

25/11/2014

We show that the pixel affinity from a high resolution image can be used to enhance low resolution images of the same scene. This technique is general enough to support fusion between any image types. View on Google Scholar.

Subspace Clustering for Sequential Data

2014

We show that subspace clustering on sequential data can be dramatically improved by incorporating spatial constraints. View on Google Scholar.

Image Matting for Sparse User Input by Iterative Refinement

26/11/2013

We show that iteratively refining an alpha matte can lead to impressive results with very sparse labels. View on Google Scholar.

Natural Image Matting with Total Variation Regularisation

3/12/2012

We show that total variation regularisation improves alpha mattes. View on Google Scholar.