Spring 2026 Computer Science 4580. 2/16/2026

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Video of the Day

The Experiment That Taught Monkeys How to Use Money | Freakonomics

Monkey Business, New York Times, June 5, 2005.

Logical Problem of the Day

I have two children. At least one of them is a boy born on Tuesday. What is the probability that both children are boys?

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.

  • You may provide mid-semester feedback on canvas starting February 16th and ending February 23rd. It is anonymous.

  • Yale Information Society Project Free lunch. This week.

  • Joanne Lipman's slides. Her contact information is available as a QR code on the last slide.

  • Next Wednesday (2/25), we have a guest speaker, Phil Vachon, Head of Infrastructure, Bloomberg LLC.
    We will go out for dinner at Mory's. If you want to attend, enter your name in Discussions. We will have a lottery on Monday

  • This Wednesday (2/18), we have a guest speaker, Professor William Goetzmann, Yale School of Management
    We will go out for dinner at Mory's. Below are the students who entered their names in Discussions before the deadline.
    1. Kemi Omoniyi
    2. Arya Bhushan
    3. Katie Brady
    4. Zeke Akinbade
    5. Yuwang Ma
    6. Diana Shyshkova
    7. Elizabeth Schaefer
    8. Olivia Ye (Niccolai)
    We will have 6 guests, so all the entrants who have not previously gone to dinner are eligible. We pick 6 out of 7. The remaining 2 entrants, will be alternates. 
    >>> import random
>>> lst = list(range(1,8))
>>> lst
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
>>> random.shuffle(lst)
>>> random.shuffle(lst)
>>> random.shuffle(lst)
>>> lst
[5, 2, 4, 3, 7, 6, 1]
    Thus, here are the guests and alternates:
    1. Arya Bhushan
    2. Katie Brady
    3. Zeke Akinbade
    4. Yuwang Ma
    5. Diana Shyshkova
    6. Elizabeth Schaefer
    Alternates:
    1. Kemi Omoniyi
    2. Olivia Ye (Niccolai)

    Lecture

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

    Assignments

    You can begin work on hw 2 We will discuss yfinance and friends.

    AI at Yale

    Yale AI Lab Showcase November 5, 2025.

    The Realm of Decisions

  • 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. Try to analyze it along the mindless / mindful spectrum.

  • What is a correct decision? See Realistic Rationality which is derived from the paper: 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.

  • The VOTE program is available on the zoo. There is also a github repository of the Common LISP code for VOTE.

    The Yale AI Project: Cognitive Modelling

    See The Yale Artificial Intelligence Project: A Brief History Stephen Slade, AI Magazine, 1987.

    See Conceptual Dependency and Its Descendants Steven Lytinen, 1992.

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