CS 201 - Spring 2025. 2/10/2025.


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Welcome to CS 201!

Video of the Day

Dream sequence from Luis Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"

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.

Recursive Image of the Day

Logical problem of the day

What happens when you search for "recursion" in google ?

OK. Here is the actual problem. You are taking the math SAT and encounter a multiple choice problem where the question is torn out, but the answers appear as follows:

  1. (3x + 1)(3x - 1)
  2. 9x2 - 1
  3. 9x2 + 1
  4. (3x)2 + i2
Which one is correct?

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

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.

Lecture 12: HW2 + UNIX.

  • 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]. hw3 is now available. Note: I have listed provisional due dates for all assignments. Catch up on reading the Racket Guide, chapters 3 and 4.

    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
    Efficiency, Resilience, and Artificial Intelligence

    Moshe Vardi, Rice University. Tuesday, February 11, 6pm, SLB 129

    In both computer science and economics, efficiency is a cherished property. Thefield of algorithms is almost solely focused on their efficiency. The goal of AI research is to increase efficiency by reducing human labor. In economics, the main advantage of the free market is that it promises "economic efficiency". A major lesson from many recent disasters is that both fields have over-emphasized efficiency and under-emphasized resilience. I argue that resilience is a more important property than efficiency and discuss how the two fields can broaden their focus to make resilience a primary consideration. I will conclude by raising serious questions on the goal of the AI research program.

  • https://notebooklm.google/ Your Personalized AI Research Assistant. video tutorial. My younger daughter, Alexandra, who is at Google, recommended test driving this.
    It's not my team, but it seems like an intriguing tool for studying, e.g. upload all the lecture notes/problem sets and then ask it to quiz you or generate a practice exam. Ask the LLM your points of confusion. Ask it to create a podcast about the notes for when you're on your run.

  • Anti-patterns - the opposite of Design Patterns (which I compared to musicical forms). These are bad ways to write code.

    Racket.

    hw2 review.

    Lecture: Computability.

    Augustin-Louis Cauchy, the famous French mathematician, once came across a number theory article proving that the astonishing Diophantine equation x3+y3+z3=t3 had no solution in the whole numbers.

    Cauchy, who beneath his stern exterior hid a rather sarcastic and even laughing nature, objected by sending the original back with a simple one-line note:

    33+43+53=63

    Computability.html (jupyter)

    Getting to know UNIX

    UNIX Introduction Principle 2.
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