Spring 2026 Computer Science 4580. 1/21/2026

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Note: you can find this page by going to the syllabus in canvas and then clicking "home" and "lectures" and "0121.html".

Video of the Day

The Story of Python and how it took over the world | Python: The Documentary. Key points: mostly a bunch of nerdy white guys (now there are PyLadies but no MeToo's unlike GNU and Linux), Guido is actually pretty chill which is reflected in Python itself, civil war over Python 2 vs 3, bitterness over the walrus operator.

Robert Kahn.

Logical Problem of the Day

At the beginning of the first World War, the uniform of the British soldiers included a brown cloth cap. They were not provided with metal helmets.

As the war went on, the army authorities and the War Office became alarmed at the high proportion of men suffering head injuries, of course.

They therefore decided to replace the cloth headgear with metal helmets. From then on, all soldiers wore the metal helmets.

Shockingly, the War Office was amazed to discover that there were more soldiers hospitalized with head injuries than ever before. It can be assumed that the intensity of fighting was the same before and after the change took place.

Why should the number of soldiers hospitalized for head injuries per battalion increase when the men were wearing metal helmets rather than cloth caps?

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.

Announcements

Let us know if you have an upcoming event you would like to share with the class.

Yale Information Society Project Free lunch. This week.

Lecture

I have office hours Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30-3:30pm pm, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

Complete the online student information sheet.

Assignments

You can begin work on hw 1 Note: some of you took CS 370 last year which had this same problem. If so, I suggest that you tackle it using AI this time.

The Realm of Decisions

Tattoo redux:
"Because" to Get People to Do Stuff. Ellen Langer copy machine experiment: The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of "Placebic" Information in Interpersonal Interaction Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1978). She is my academic cousin - student of Robert Abelson at Yale. See Beliefs, Reasoning, and Decision Making: Psycho-Logic in Honor of Bob Abelson. Chapter 2, The Illusion of Calculated Decisions, Ellen Langer. pp 33-53. She gives a shout out to Wittgenstein! Also, Bob Abelson is largely responsible for the creation of the Yale CS Department. We played poker as well with Ed Zigler. (I was told by John Belushi not to drop so many names.)
Also, discusses world in which $100,000 is preferred to $1,000,000. Like the story of the genie and the professor.
Introduction to Decision Making data structure.
We shall explore Langer's mindlessness / mindfulness dichotomy for decision making. For the next class and the coming weeks: Give an example of an explanation you thought interesting because it was especially good or bad. It can be personal or from the news. Use the Discussions section of canvas (not Ed Discussion). You earn a quiz point by posting to Discussions.
Truth is more complicated that the logicians would have you believe. Quotes about Truth
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.
Economic Decision Theory
God and the lottery ticket story.
Tic-tac-toe playing chicken, Calvin Trillin.
Behavioral Economics
PIMCO Behavioral Science

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