Spring 2026 Computer Science 4580. 4/1/2026

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Video of the Day

John Cleese: This is the key to creativity

The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent, Donald W. MacKinnon, Walter Van Dyke Bingham Lecture given at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, April 11, 1962.

Bingham also studied creativity and gave the poet Amy Lowell a word association test and "found that she gave a higher proportion of unique responses than those of any one outside a mental institution." (1953)

To a Gentleman Who Wanted to See the First Drafts of My Poems in the Interests of Psychological Research

Ithaka, by C.P. Cavafy. Read by Sean Connery

Throw back to Ellen Langer mindfulness.

Logical Problem of the Day

The average gait of a pedestrian in a given city can predict which of the following urban statistics: the number of libraries, the length of electrical conduit, or the number of patents filed in that city.

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

Spurious correlations

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.

  • Out guest speaker for next Monday, George Neville-Neil, had to cancel. He had a conflict with a DARPA meeting. However, we have another speaker Wednesday April 8: Ben Fried Sign up in discussions if you wish to attend dinner. The cutoff is 9 am Monday, April 6th.

    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 hw3.

    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.

    Recap of Monday 3/23

  • Graham Allison and the Essence of Decision re cuban missile crisis. Alternative to the economic rational decision maker, e.g. Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, and GPS. "The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer - often, indeed, to the decider himself." (JFK)

    Rule-based Expert Systems

    GPS: The General Problem Solver. Separated knowledge from process. Means-ends analysis. See Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming, Chapter 4.

    Expert systems - an overview. The rules help provide an explanation.

    See ExpertSystems.html MYCIN and friends.

    http://www.norvig.com/paip/README.html

    Truth maintenance Systems

    Case-based Systems

    Case-Based Reasoning: A Research Paradigm Slade, 1990.

    CBR.html

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