Spring 2023 Computer Science 458

Video of the day

See Roger Schank Keynote at DARPA, Telling Stories. Obituary New York Times, 2/20/2023.

Decision Problem of the Day

A certain town is served by two hospitals. In the larger hospital about 45 babies are born each day, and in the smaller hospital about 15 babies are born each day. As you know, about 50 percent of all babies are boys. However, the exact percentage varies from day to day. Sometimes it may be higher than 50 percent, sometimes lower.

For a period of 1 year, each hospital recorded the days on which more than 60 percent of the babies born were boys. Which hospital do you think recorded more such days ?

Results:

Big hospital: 0%
Small hospital: 73%
About the same: 27%

Explanations

Previously, we discussed Ellen Langer's psychology experiment which suggested that any reason is OK, even if it does not seem to make sense. I invite you to be alert to explanations that you observe in the next several days, and to post any that may be exceptionally good (like getting a COVID vaccine) or wacky (like Aaron Judge). Post to Discussions on canvas.

Administrivia

As of last week, I have office hours Mondays and Wednesdays from 2 to 3pm, NOT on Friday, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

Last Monday, our guest speaker was John Niccolai from Citadel. Students interested in employment options at Citadel should contact: Anthony Tutwiler (Anthony.Tutwiler@citadel.com), who is the campus recruiting contact for Yale, as well as Matt Mitro (Matt.Mitro@citadel.com) who oversees campus recruiting overall. Mention John's name when you contact them. John has informed them that they should be expecting to hear from you.

Last Wednesday, our guest speaker was Professor Will Goetzmann. A number of students wanted more information about his talk. Will suggested that you explore his website https://viking.som.yale.edu/ It has links to various papers, as well as an online Introduction to Investment Theory. At the end of his talk, Will invited students to contact him if they had questions about project ideas.

Next Monday's guest speaker is Joanne Lipman, a graduate of Yale and a lecturer at Yale, and her daughter, Rebecca Distler who is a graduate of Yale College and the School of Public Health, and the co-author of the linked Time Magazine article: "Schools Shouldn't Ban Access to ChatGPT" (January 11, 2023). There will be a dinner at Villa Lulu (230 College Street) following their talk. We will have a lottery on Wednesday to select student attendees.

Assignments

hw 2 which deals with finance. See Ed Discussion note by Sam regarding alternative to yfinance. Also, the paper assignment is available.

Trading Competition

From Kaitlyn Sandler, a former CS 458 student:

The company I am working for next year is hosting a super cool trading challenge in March. No trading or CS experience required!
Info:
IMC Trading is hosting a global, 10-day trading challenge called Prosperity! Put your analytical and technical skills to the test in a virtual market. Go head-to-head against thousands of like-minded people from all over the world by trading items like wasabi roots, pineapples and pizza with savvy penguins and forgetful ducks.
Prize: The winner receives $25,000! IMC will also donate another $25,000 in your name to global nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup.
Registration Link: https://prosperity.imc.com/?utm_source=referral-contest&utm_medium=kaitlyn-sandor&utm_campaign=prosperity_2023
The challenge starts on March 20th (the tail end of break) and runs until March 30th with 5x 48hr rounds. The basic premise is you are on an island and need to trade with surrounding islands to allow your island to prosper the most. You can implement both automated and manual trading and there is some helpful advice in the wiki on resources to start if students aren't sure exactly how to implement a trading algorithm: https://imc-prosperity.notion.site/Writing-an-Algorithm-in-Python-c44b46f32941430fa1eccb6ff054be26
There is also this promo video of the challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSiyC6erX8E&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fprosperity.imc.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjQ&feature=emb_imp_woyt

Lecture: 2/22/2023

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.

Conceptual Dependency (CD) (slides)
MARGIE: parse English into CD, infer other concepts, generate natural languge (English and German, later Chinese)
- Task Orientation
- Psychological process model
- Canonical representation of knowledge
- Translation, synonomy, paraphrase
- Inference
- Ambiguity
Scripts, plans, goals and understanding (the book Searle read)
- Scripts: SAM (See Script Application Computer Understanding of Newspaper Stories by Richard Cullingford.), FRUMP
- Plans: PAM (See Understanding Goal-Based Stories, by Robert Wilensky), TALESPIN See The Meta-Novel, James Meehan.
  One day Joe Bear was hungry. He asked his friend Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving told him there was a beehive in the oak tree. Joe threatened to hit Irving if he didn’t tell him where some honey was.
  One day Joe Bear was hungry. He asked his friend Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving told him there was a beehive in the oak tree. Joe walked to the oak tree. He ate the beehive.
Learning, memory, and explantion
- Memory Organization Packets (MOPS)
- Bower, Black, and Turner
- CYRUS
- IPP
- Case-based systems (later topic)

Goal-based Decision Making: VOTE

See Amazon Talk.pdf Goal-based Decision-Making: An Interpersonal Model.

See also Goal-based Decision Making. Stephen Slade. Hardcover: 304 pages. Publisher: Psychology Press (October 1, 1993). It is also available at the Yale Bookstore. Online copy through Yale library Online copy of thesis from which book was derived at Yale Library

See Running VOTE on the zoo.

Check out sarcastic-explanation

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