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A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell

A brief promo...

A New Start: Innovative Introductory AI-Centered Courses at Cornell

Eric 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

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

Acknowledgments

Teaching 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