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CSCI 0190 · Fall 2026

BosBike 3🔗

    1 What is This Assignment’s Purpose?

    2 Theme Song

    3 Assignment

    4 AI

    5 Starter

    6 Socially Responsible Computing

1 What is This Assignment’s Purpose?🔗

We’re continuing with the bikshare data! Unlike in the real world, this time we get a do-over in our decision-support work. Use it wisely!

2 Theme Song🔗

Doubt by twenty one pilots

3 Assignment🔗

Read EdStem to see how the votes came out.

If you are in a significant majority, you’re probably okay? Doesn’t hurt to double-check!

If you’re not, there may be something off with your data or computation. Your job is to re-examine your work and see if you can figure out what is happening.

You will continue to work with the same datasets as in BosBike 2. You will turn in:

  1. A final version of your program.

  2. A report on what data cleansing you felt it necessary to do across the two assignments.

  3. A report on what (if any) changes you made (or didn’t!), and why, in response to the EdStem votes. (The obvious “why” is “the majority had a different answer”. We’re looking for more insight: What thinking did that trigger? For instance, did it make you notice something you’d missed?)

  4. A brief report on whether you used AI and, if so, how.

Please upload the reports separately from the code as a single unified PDF file, with appropriate headers so we can identify the different parts.

Of course, even if everyone else got a different answer, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong! In such a case, though, it’s especially helpful if you can reconstruct the error that led them to get the wrong answer.

4 AI🔗

You are welcome to use AI for this assignment. If you do, you should use our AI setup (Software). Keep in mind that you take responsibility for the work it does! You should understand its output and be able to answer questions about it. Treat it as an aid to your work, not as a substitute for your work.

5 Starter🔗

Not applicable.

6 Socially Responsible Computing🔗

Read/View

There are two options for reading and writing on this assignment. One has to do with privacy, and the other with equity. Pick whichever you find more interesting. (You can pick both, if you really want to! But you must turn in written work about at least one.)

Privacy. Trip data like the kind in this assignment usually doesn’t come with names attached, but that doesn’t mean it’s anonymous. Read this 2014 piece on how “anonymized” NYC taxi trip records were used to identify specific riders — including celebrities — from nothing more than pickup/dropoff locations and times. Then read this 2022 piece, which shows the same trick still works on bikeshare and scooter trip data eight years later, even after the industry adopted a known fix.

Equity. Read this 2025 article on Bluebikes’ expansion into Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain, where the city states its goal is for 89% of Boston households to be within a 10-minute walk of a station.

Write

Whichever reading(s) you picked, answer the corresponding prompt:

Privacy. Both pieces describe the same problem, eight years apart, even though both describe potential solutions. Why do you think this kind of privacy leak keeps recurring even after operators know about it and know how to fix it? Is that fundamentally a technical problem, an incentives problem, or something else, or some combination thereof?

Equity. Boston’s stated goal is that 89% of households be within a 10-minute walk of a Bluebikes station. Is “within walking distance” the same thing as “has equitable access”? What other factors not captured by that measure could still leave a neighborhood underserved even if it hits the 89% mark.

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