A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
A brief promo...
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses
at CornellEric Breck, David Easley, K-Y Daisy Fan, Jon Kleinberg,
Lillian Lee, Jennifer Wofford, and Ramin Zabih
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Bringing students to CS
• Fewer Computer Science students!
• Especially at the freshman level
• Students think computer science is dull
• Show them cutting-edge research: AI!
• Can’t have “one-size-fits-all”
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Why AI for a CS intro?
• Concreteness
• Robots, spam-filtering, search engines
• Broad, interdisciplinary appeal
• Connections to economics, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and other fields
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Four courses
• Computation, Information, and Intelligence
• Networks
• Computation and Culture in a Digital Age
• Introduction to Computation with Robotics
• All have websites; some texts in prep
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Computation, Information, and Intelligence
• No programming
• No prerequisites besides calculus
• But students know web search, language
• Pencil-and-paper problems
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Perceptron learning
• Introduce via geometric and trigonometric ideas
• Discuss proof of convergence
• Modify proof and discuss consequences
Computation, Information, and Intelligence
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Information Retrieval
• Students are familiar with search engines
• Vector-space model
• Builds on geometric concepts
• Link model
• PageRank, Hubs-and-authorities
Computation, Information, and Intelligence
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Other Topics and Results
• Search, game-playing
• Network structure of the web
• Natural language processing
• Turing test, Chinese room, Loebner prize
• High enrollment of women
Computation, Information, and Intelligence
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Networks
• Social, technological, natural worlds all exhibit network structure
• Cross-listed in CS, Economics, Information Science, and sociology
High-school dating(Bearman, Moody, and Stovel, 2004)
(Image by Mark Newman)
Corporate e-mail communication(Adamic and Adar, 2005)
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Networks
• How do opinions, fads, and political movements move through society?
• How fragile are food webs and financial markets?
• How is the popularity of websites distributed and why?
Some Questions
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Networks
• Social networks
• Nash equilibria in auctions, traffic
• Markets and strategic interaction
Graph theory & Game Theory
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Networks
• Search engines
• Keyword-based advertising
• Policy implications - voting, intellectual property
Information networks and the web
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Networks
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Networks
• Class blog (3 graded posts per student)
• Attracted interest from business world
• High re-enrollment in second running (over 200 students, over 25 majors)
• Almost no existing reading material at the right level
Other topics and results
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Computation and Culture in a Digital Age
• Summer course for high school students
• Cornell’s Summer Explorations Program
• Goal: explore ideas from computing and their role in society
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Computation and Culture in a Digital Age
• A program that gets better from experience
• Some methods - rules, weights, memory
• Spam classification
Machine learning
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Computation and Culture in a Digital Age
• Tasks - question answering, translation
• Experiments with web translators
• Puzzles from the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
Natural Language Processing
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Computation and Culture in a Digital Age
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A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Computation and Culture in a Digital Age
• Introduction to programming with MATLAB
• Human Computer Interaction
• Ethics and culture
Other Topics
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Introduction to Computing with Robotics
• Focus on sensing, not reasoning or control
• Programming in MATLAB 7
CS100R robots (not to scale)
Sony AIBO iRobot Create
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Introduction to Computing with Robotics
• Determine position and orientation of a light stick
• Algorithmic development
• Sorting, median-finding
Finding the red light
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Introduction to Computing with Robotics
• Analyze odometry data
• Least-squares fitting
• Implement gradient descent
A Robot Speedometer
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Introduction to Computing with Robotics
• Distinguishing between Coke & Pepsi cans
• Which robot moved? - Image differencing
• Open-ended final projects
Other Topics
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
Other Introductory CS at Cornell
• Computing in the Arts
• Visual Imaging in the Electronic Age
• “regular” intro courses
• Java, MATLAB
A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell
AcknowledgmentsTeaching assistants and course consultants
Steve Baker, Jared Cantwell, Tze Jian Chear, Chris Danis, Ray Doyle, Rafael Frongillo, Nick Gallo, Jon Guarino, Abraham Heifets, Amanda Holland-Minkley, Marek Janicki, Tian Liang, Homan Lee, Yuzhe Liu, Selina Lok, Ezra Kannof, Devin Kennedy, Blazej Kot, Elliot Kulakow, Shannon McGrath, Brian Mick, Anton Morozov, Milo Polte, Ben Pu, Neeta Rattan, Brian Rogan, Gurmeet Singh, Sara Tansey,Mark Yatskar, Adam Yeh, Chong-Suk Yoon, and Yisong Yue