Spring 2024 Computer Science 458 Introduction. 1/17/2024

Video of the Day

When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, who said "Well, God has arrived, I met him on the 5:15 train."?

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Wittgensstein needed a Ph.D. to work at Cambridge, and Russell urged him to submit the Tractatus as his thesis. One of his advisors wrote in the examiner's report: "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree." Who was that?

Wittgenstein: Philosophical discussion in Cambridge - Part 1 My goal is to leave my students less confused than those of Wittgenstein, but as curious and open to new ideas as Wittgenstein himself.

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Lecture

• Biography. Hybrid: academia (theory) / industry (practice).
  • Yale undergraduate. music major.
  • Developed computer systems for presidential campaigns and the White House, introducing electronic mail to campaigns and the internet to the White House.
  • Yale graduate student, M.S., Ph.D., computer science (artificial intelligence)
  • Yale Computer Science Department: Assistant Chairman, Assistant Director of the Yale AI Project, Lecturer.
  • Connected Yale to the Internet.
  • NYU Stern School of Business, Department of Information Systems, Assistant Professor.
  • Wrote three books (T/Scheme, LISP, decision making)
  • Developed investment and risk technology systems for Wall Street. Sell side (Morgan Stanley), Buy side (INVESCO, Bank of America, Commonfund)
• Syllabus
• Course trailer.
• Ned Deming.
  • Advised Japan how to recover after World War II. Focus on quality.
  • See "System of Profound Knowledge."
  • "Quality is free."
  • Opposed ranking employees or students. vs HBS failure rule.
  • Avoid merit pay - discourages cooperation.
  • Deming was my colleague at NYU Business School.
  • Deming said that most courses could be viewed as the professor handing out marbles in every lecture, and then giving an exam in which he asks for the marbles back from the students.
  • In this course, I will at times hand out marbles, but I will expect the students to think on their own and give me marbles I never saw before. Better said: I will give you bricks which you will use to build something new.
• Guest speakers. In the past, we had speakers from finance, Google, Facebook, Palentir, MIT, and elsewhere. We have permission to invite speakers and take them out to dinner - usually at Mory's or Villa Lulu. Some may want to recruit as well. I have already lined up 6 or so speakers. See the schedule at the end of the syllabus. I welcome suggestions from the class.
• Complete the online student information sheet.
• We will be using Python. If you don't already know it, you should be able to pick it up quickly. See the Google's Python Class and the books in the syllabus. Python question: what is a lambda list comprehension?
• One more thing. Some of the assignments will involve statistics and finance. We do not expect you to know statistics and finance or economics. After all, this is a computer science course. We will provide that information. The conventional wisdom on Wall Street is that if you want to hire a quant, get someone who knows the math and computer science. You can teach them the finance. Do not hire an MBA or economist. You can't teach them the math and computer science. I will teach you the finance. (See My Life as a Quant by Emanuel Derman.)

We will meet this Friday, January 19

The Realm of Decisions

• What is a correct decision? See A Realistic Model of Rationality. This short paper provides a high-level introduction to the topics we will discuss in this course: goals, plans, resources, relationships, goal adoption, explanations, subjective decisions, emotions, advice, and persuasion. We contrast it with the standard economic decision theory. We want to develop a theory that can be implemented in a computer program.
• For discussion in next class: draft reasons for and against the following:
  • Getting a tattoo.
  We assume that you have relationships with a variety of people: family, friends, colleagues, classmates, etc. Also discuss who among them will be affected by your choice, either positively or negatively. Discuss your decision process. Use the Discussions section of canvas (not Ed Discussion).
• Introduction to Decision Making