Should we retain the Edge Detection "bonus episode"?

[tobyhodges]

Since it was removed from the main body of the lesson to make the curriculum fit better into a two-day workshop schedule (#37), we have been maintaining an episode on edge detection under the Extras menu. The Maintainers have made efforts to keep this lesson aligned with updates and modifications made to the core episodes in the curriculum but there may have been some drift nevertheless.

While edge detection is a relevant task for many folks learning image processing, my concern is that it will be an increasing maintenance burden to keep the episode aligned as the core curriculum continues to be updated. Although this is not an urgent issue by any means, I'd appreciate guidance from the Curriculum Advisory Committee @datacarpentry/curriculum-advisors-image when they have the time and inclination to discuss it: does the CAC recommend that we keep this extra episode and continue to update it, or that we remove it from the lesson altogether?

[uschille]

Thanks @tobyhodges for opening this issue. The Curriculum Advisory Committee will revisit this in a future meeting.

[mkcor]

I'm taking notes here so we don't forget to update the following lines, in case we keep this episode here or move it elsewhere:

• update sentence ending with "which we will learn about in the Connected Component Analysis episode" (since, allegedly, this extra episode isn't taught before episode 08);
• likewise, update "which we used before in the Thresholding episode"
• update skimage.io.imshow(edges) to use matplotlib's imshow or re-import skimage.io (issue introduced by PR Replace skimage.io with imageio.v3 for reading/writing images. #238 -- my bad).

[uschille]

The bonus episode was discussed during the February 2023 meeting of the curriculum advisory committee (CAC). The CAC acknowledges the value of bonus materials, however, it felt that the "edge detection" episode is not sufficiently aligned with the content of the lesson and there are issues in the bonus episode that need to be addressed. At the moment, the extra episode is not self-contained and learners may face difficulties with the exercises/challenges. The CAC therefore recommends to remove the bonus episode from the current lesson webpage and consider it for a future follow-up lesson on advanced/specialized image processing.