CS 201 - Spring 2025. 2/3/2025.

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Welcome to CS 201!

Video of the Day

Geographical Fugue by Ernst Toch (1930). wiki score

In college, for a music class in contemporary performance practice, I wrote new lyrics for the Geographical Fugue related to the Watergate episode. Below is another version, based on computer technology. 

Internet!
And the big cloud computing
and the deep neural network
and the text data mining
the TCP Protocol is not in Decimal,
Rather in Binary, Binary, Binary, Binary!
Decimal, Boolean, Digital, Data type
Decimal, Boolean, Digital, Data type
Yes, UNIX, UNIX, UNIX, UNIX,
Algorithmic! Execution!
Algorithmic! Execution!

I hereby solicit suggestions for the video of the day. Please email me your ideas with explanations. Selected entries will win 5 homework points. If your video is played at the beginning of class, you must also briefly explain something about the video and something about yourself - in person.

Logical problem of the day

There are two brothers. They were born on the same year, the same month, and the same day to the same parents. However, they are not twins. Explain.

https://pollev.com/slade You may also download the app to your phone. Use the "slade" poll id.

Top Ten Reasons to Learn Racket!

Number 3: Learning to program is not like learning a foreign language. It is like learning to drive. It really does not matter that much what kind of car you use to learn to drive. All cars do basically the same thing. At some point in the future, you may land at an airport and rent a car that you have never before driven. However, within a few minutes you will be happily on your way. You need to think of programming languages that way. They all do basically the same thing. You are learning how to steer, accelerate, put on the brakes, and operate the turn signals, windshield washer, and air conditioner.

When I took the equivalent of CS 201, we learned ALGOL and APL (as well as machine language and hardware.) Note that Perlis was one of the designers of ALGOL.

Canvas Quiz of the Day (need daily password)

Most days, there will be a simple canvas quiz related to the lecture. You need a password to activate the quiz, which I will provide in class. These quizzes will count toward your class participation grade. The quiz is available only during class.

Click for today's quiz.

Note: the collaboration quiz is separate. It coincides with the first homework assignment.

Lecture 9: Recursion.

  • I have office hours Wednesdays from 4-6 pm, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

  • I am available for lunch on Mondays at 1 pm in Morse.

  • ULA office hours are found at https://csofficehours.org/CS201/schedule. Sign up via the queue.

  • Homework assignments: [Assignments]. hw2 is now available. Note: I have listed provisional due dates for all assignments. The name of your homework file submitted to gradescope must be exactly the same as the assignment file, e.g., hw0.rkt, hw1.rkt. Otherwise, zippo.

    Announcements

  • If you have an upcoming performance or athletic event, I am happy to promote it during class. Just send me a note.

  • Information Society Project Yale Law School. Weekly Events

  • Faculty Candidate talk: Zhou (Jo) Yu, Columbia University. Thursday, February 6, 10:30am, AKW 200.
    Title: AI Agents beyond ChatGPT

    Abstract:

    ChatGPT has significantly raised public expectations for conversational agents,with many now anticipating these agents to handle a wide range of tasks. However, deploying one single larger model with generalized capabilities with simple prompting is often impractical to complete these tasks. There are various issues in terms of accuracy, cost, and security, particularly in industry settings. Solving tasks requires a systematic combination of different models to form AI agent orchestration. In this talk, we will explore various approaches to achieve that through diverse techniques including Reflection, Monte Carlo Tree Search, etc.

    Bio:

    Zhou (Jo) Yu is an Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Computer Science Department and Founder of ARKLEX.AI. She obtained her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Yu has received several best paper awards in top NLP conferences and has won Forbes 30 under 30 in 2018. Dr. Yu has developed various AI systems that have had a real impact, including winning the Amazon Alexa Prize. Dr. Yu co-founded ARKLEX.AI, focusing on democratizing AI Agent building with GenAI developer tools.

    website: https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~zhouyu/

    Racket.

    hw1 overview - compound

    TailRecursion.html (jupyter) tail recursion + let and optional arguments.

    Recursion.html (jupyter) deep recursion.

    Getting to know UNIX

    UNIX Introduction Principle 2.
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