Pre or Corequisites: Calculus based Probability and Statistics. Introduction to computer networks and the technical foundations of the Internet, including applications, protocols, local area networks, algorithms for routing and congestion control, security, elementary performance evaluation. Several written and programming assignments required.
Corequisites: SIEO W3600,IEOR E3658
Introduction to computer networks and the technical foundations of the Internet, including applications, protocols, local area networks, algorithms for routing and congestion control, security, elementary performance evaluation. Several written and programming assignments required.
Steven Spielberg may be the world’s most influential living film director. His uncanny grasp of visual storytelling and his auteurist signature can be found on every film he has directed, as well as many he has produced. This course will analyze the content and formal construction of Spielberg’s films by following their thematic through-lines – family ties (strained and healthy), the implacable threat, humanity at war, man vs. the natural world, the child’s perspective, and others – in films as disparate as
Jaws
and
The Color Purple
.
Prerequisites: substantial software development experience in Java, C++ or C# beyond the level of
COMS W3157
. Corequisites: Recommended:
COMS W4111
. Software lifecycle from the viewpoint of designing and implementing N-tier applications (typically utilizing web browser, web server, application server, database). Major emphasis on quality assurance (code inspection, unit and integration testing, security and stress testing). Centers on a student-designed team project that leverages component services (e.g., transactions, resource pooling, publish/subscribe) for an interactive multi-user application such as a simple game.
Prerequisites: equivalent.
Software lifecycle from the viewpoint of designing and implementing N-tier applications (typically utilizing web browser, web server, application server, database). Major emphasis on quality assurance (code inspection, unit and integration testing, security and stress testing). Centers on a student-designed team project that leverages component services (e.g., transactions, resource pooling, publish/subscribe) for an interactive multi-user application such as a simple game.
The world economy is a patchwork of competing and complementary interests among and between governments, corporations, and civil society. These stakeholders at times cooperate and also conflict over issues of global poverty, inequality, and sustainability. What role do human rights play in coordinating the different interests that drive global economic governance? This seminar will introduce students to different structures of global governance for development, trade, labor, finance, the environment, migration, and intellectual property and investigate their relationship with human rights. Students will learn about public, private, and mixed forms of governance, analyze the ethical and strategic perspectives of the various stakeholders and relate them to existing human rights norms. The course will examine the work of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and the International Financial Institutions, as well as international corporate and non-governmental initiatives.
This course is an ethnographic and historical introduction to the construction of gender and feminist theory in the South Asian context. We will focus on textual and visual material, primarily ethnographies and films, to provide a critique of normative representations of the "South Asian woman". These readings will be used to reveal the complex social and historical configurations that institute and obscure gendered experiences and representations within the colonial imagination and their colonized others. A significant motif of this course will be to develop alternative ways of knowing and understanding gender construction, sexual relations, and community formation in South Asia.
This course examines the relationship between visual culture and human rights. It considers a wide range of visual media (photography, painting, sculpture), as well as aspects of visuality (surveillance, profiling). We will use case studies ranging in time from the early modern period (practices in which the body was marked to measure criminality, for example), to the present day. Within this framework, we will study how aspects of visual culture have been used to advocate for human rights, as well as how images and visual regimes have been used to suppress human rights. An important part of the course will be to consider the role played by reception in shaping a discourse around human rights, visuality, and images. Subjects to be addressed include: the nature of evidence; documentation and witness; censorship; iconoclasm; surveillance; profiling; advocacy images; signs on the body; visibility and invisibility.
Data handling in SAS (including SAS INPUT, reading and writing raw and system files, data set subsetting, concatenating, merging, updating and working with arrays), SAS MACROS, common SAS functions, and graphics in SAS. Review of SAS tools for exploratory data analysis, and common statistical procedures (including, categorical data, dates and longitudinal data, correlation and regression, nonparametric comparisons, ANOVA, multiple regression, multivariate data analysis).
Prerequisites:
MATH V1101
Calculus I and
MATH V1102
Calculus II, or the equivalent, and
STAT W1111
or
STAT W1211
(Introduction to Statistics).
Corequisites:
MATH V1201
Calculus III, or the equivalent, or the instructor's permission.
This course can be taken as a single course for students requiring knowledge of probability or as a foundation for more advanced courses. It is open to both undergraduate and master students. This course satisfies the prerequisite for
STAT W3107
and
W4107.
Topics covered include combinatorics, conditional probability, random variables and common distributions, expectation, independence, Bayes' rule, joint distributions, conditional expectations, moment generating functions, central limit theorem, laws of large numbers, characteristic functions.
Prerequisites:
STAT W3105
Intro. to Probability or
STAT W4105
Probability, or the equivalent.
Calculus-based introduction to the theory of statistics. Useful distributions, law of large numbers and central limit theorem, point estimation, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, maximum likelihood, likelihood ratio tests, nonparametric procedures, theory of least squares and analysis of variance.
Open to CC, CN, GS, GN, BC, EN, GSAS, GSAS Liberal, and SEAS Graduate Students
Introduction to programming in the R statistical package: functions, objects, data structures, flow control, input and output, debugging, logical design, and abstraction. Writing code for numerical and graphical statistical analyses. Writing maintainable code and testing, stochastic simulations, paralleizing data analyses, and working with large data sets. Examples from data science will be used for demonstration.
This course is designed to provide the student with a general overview and understanding of the historical, political, economic and social forces that underlie the creation and maintenance of present-day Caribbean societies and cultures. The first half of the course will deal exclusively with the historical background of the region, focusing on such seminal processes as the transatlantic slave trade; European mercantilism and colonization; New World slavery and plantation societies; and the evolution of national polities, institutions and identities in the English, Spanish and French-speaking Caribbean. The second half of the course will deal with issues of a more contemporary, anthropological nature things like race, class & ethnicity; gender relations; Afro-Caribbean religious systems; migration; and popular culture.
Prerequisites: MDES W1214-W1215, or the equivalent
$15.00= Language Resource Fee, $10.00 = Materials Fee
Improvement of writing and speaking skills through compositions, class discussions, and presentations in Arabic on topics such as areas and cultures of the Middle East; classical and modern Arabic literature; and current, authentic materials available from Middle Eastern sources. Review of grammatical and syntactic rules as needed.
Prerequisites:
MDES W1214-W1215
, or the equivalent.
$15.00= Language Resource Fee, $10.00 = Materials Fee
The continuation of
S4210
, above.
The theory and practice of teaching intermediate and advanced Japanese courses. Practicum on teaching practice.
The theory and practice of teaching intermediate and advanced Japanese courses. Practicum on teaching practice.
The human rights movement is one of the most successful social justice movements of our time, establishing universal principles that govern how states should treat citizens and non-citizens. The movement strengthens, and is strengthened by, a complex web of institutions, laws, and norms that constitute a functioning global system that builds on itself progressively, animated by strong NGOs. The course will address the evolution of the international human rights movement and on the NGOs that drive the movement on the international, regional and domestic levels. Sessions will highlight the experiences of major human rights NGOs and will address topics including strategy development, institutional representation, research methodologies, partnerships, networks, venues of engagement, campaigning, fundraising and, perhaps most importantly, the fraught and complex debates about adaptation to changing global circumstances.
In this course students explore the elements involved in the creation of theatre today in the historic heart of American theatre: New York City. The core elements of theatrical craft are discussed: playwriting, directing, acting, design and producing. Aspects of New York theatrical history complement these discussions by exploring the roots and traditions of theatrical practice. While a variety of theatrical forms and styles are explored, this course is rooted in contemporary dramatic texts. Each week students attend a live performance at various venues throughout the city in order to gain insight into the ways that theatre truly becomes a New York event.
This course introduces the fundamental concepts and problems of international human rights law. What are the origins of modern human rights law? What is the substance of this law, who is obligated by it, and how is it enforced? The course will cover the major international human rights treaties and mechanisms and consider some of today's most significant human rights issues and controversies. While the topics are necessarily law-related, the course will assume no prior exposure to legal studies.
Prerequisites:
COMS W3134
,
COMS W3136
, or
COMS W3137
, and
COMS W3203
.
Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.
Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.
This course is designed to provide with an overview of Central Asia’s imperial history, starting with Russia’s expansion in the 18th century to the present. Its main focus will be on the five post-Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. We will explore the impact of imperial tsarist and Soviet legacies on reshaping the region’s practices and policies of Islam, gender, nation-state building, democratization, and economic development. The course is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. It does not require the knowledge of either Russian or local Central Asian languages.
Prerequisites:
COMS W3261
.
Develops a quantitative theory of the computational difficulty of problems in terms of the resources (eg. time, space) needed to solve them. Classification of problems into complexity classes, reductions, and completeness. Power and limitations of different modes of computation such as nondeterminism, randomization, interaction, and parallelism.
Prerequisites: (COMS W3261)
Develops a quantitative theory of the computational difficulty of problems in terms of the resources (e.g. time, space) needed to solve them. Classification of problems into complexity classes, reductions, and completeness. Power and limitations of different modes of computation such as nondeterminism, randomization, interaction, and parallelism.
The course will provide an introduction to Machine Learning and its core models and algorithms. The aim of the course is to provide students of statistics with detailed knowledge of how Machine Learning methods work and how statistical models can be brought to bear in computer systems - not only to analyze large data sets, but to let computers perform tasks that traditional methods of computer science are unable to address. Examples range from speech recognition and text analysis through bioinformatics and medical diagnosis. This course provides a first introduction to the statistical methods and mathematical concepts which make such technologies possible.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 and STAT GU4205
A fast-paced introduction to statistical methods used in quantitative finance. Financial applications and statistical methodologies are intertwined in all lectures. Topics include regression analysis and applications to the Capital Asset Pricing Model and multifactor pricing models, principal components and multivariate analysis, smoothing techniques and estimation of yield curves statistical methods for financial time series, value at risk, term structure models and fixed income research, and estimation and modeling of volatilities. Hands-on experience with financial data.
This course examines how changes in information and communications technology have, over the past two decades, fundamentally transformed the practices of civil society actors engaged with human rights issues. New communications tools such as Twitter, blogs, and Facebook have changed the ways that organizations communicate with their followers and seek to influence public debate. The increasing accessibility of analytic tools for researching and visualizing changing patterns of human rights abuse has empowered groups to better understand and respond more forcefully to these issues. Indeed, the use of social media as a communications tool has made it a data source for those monitoring and analyzing patterns of activity, in ways that draw increasingly on the techniques of big data analysis.
Intense laboratory exercise where students meet 4 days a week for eight weeks in the summer term participating in experimental design, bench work, and data analysis. Grades depend on participation in the laboratory, reports, and practical exams. Class starts immediately following Spring final exams. Open to MA and Postbac Biotechnology students. This course is offered in the summer. Students from other schools or programs may enroll if space is available.
There are many misconceptions as to what makes an appealing story for children and how to get a story published. Many novice writers are simply relating an incident as opposed to creating a story. This course will show beginner and experienced writers how to mine their lives and imaginations for ideas and how to develop those ideas into children's stories-a step by step process from inspiration to finished manuscript for picture books, early readers, emerging readers and chapter books. Students will also learn the importance of reading their writing out loud-a process that helps both reader and listener develop a better ear for the story's pace, cadence and structure. Writing for children has become incredibly popular in the past fifteen years and publishing houses have been inundated with manuscripts. Many houses have ceased accepting unsolicited manuscripts all together. This course will disclose other avenues to getting your manuscript into the hands of agents and editors.
The growth of presidential power, the creation and use of the institutionalized presidency, presidential-congressional and presidential-bureaucratic relationships, and the presidency and the national security apparatus.
How does the traveler become the travel writer? What makes good travel writing? Why does it matter today? This course examines and breaks down the very specific craft of travel writing. Simply because we like to travel, does it qualify us to write about it? Everywhere has been written about, so how do we find something fresh to say about… Paris, or even Patagonia? In this course, we both dispel, and prove, some of the myths of travel writing. Students learn to find an angle in order to uncover destinations anew and make them personal— it’s in the personal that the universal is revealed. From crafting a compelling lede and understanding the need for a strong “nut graph,” to knowing the value of dialogue in propelling the story forward, and then finding the ideal kicker to send the reader away satisfied, students dissect published stories and are sent out into “the field” (of New York City) to craft their own. Travel writing is more than, “I went here, I did this, I ate that.” From front-of-book and service pieces, to destination features, we discuss magazine and newspaper travel writing in depth, as well as touch on longer form travel writing. Finally, through exercises and assignments, students learn to craft a compelling pitch in order to approach editors.
Young adult fiction is a relatively new category in book publishing, but it is growing fast. The readers of YA books are between 12 and 18 years of age. However, its popularity can sometimes extend well beyond the intended age range; Harry Potter being the best-known example. The YA category spans a number of subgenres, including paranormal romance, dystopian sci-fi, and coming-of-age realism. The best YA novels feature fully realized characters and a level of emotional complexity that appeal to teens. And yet, YA books can include frightful displays of violence and can be unabashed about sex. They also feature swiftly moving plots combined with a young person's unique world view-pairings that are unlike anything found in traditional literary fiction. In this workshop, we will embark on writing our own YA novels. With our work always at the center of discussion we will explore the essence of what makes it YA in terms of narrative point of view and subject matter while also challenging the conventions of genre fiction. By way of example, we will look at the work of Sherman Alexie, Lois Lowry and Megan McCafferty. For examples of "new adult" or "crossover" fiction we will read excerpts from books such as those by Curtis Sittenfeld, J.D. Salinger, and others. Course work will include selected readings, but the emphasis of the workshop will be on writing and critiquing our own work. Students will write up to three chapters of an original YA or crossover novel along with a partial chapter outline for their book in progress. The class will also include visits from published YA authors who will speak about craft, audience, and getting published.
The development of the modern culture of consumption, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, feminine fashion and conspicuous consumption, and the birth of advertising. Examination of novels, fashion magazines, and advertising images.
Theoretical and practical considerations, and design principles, for modern thermofluids systems. Topics include boiling, condensation, phase change heat transfer, multimode heat transfer, heat exchangers, and modeling of thermal transport systems. Emphasis on applications of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics to modeling actual physical systems. Term project on conceptual design and presentation of a thermofluid system that meets specified criteria.
Prerequisites: at least four semesters of college-level Russian, or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission.
$15.00= Language Resource Fee, $15.00 = Materials Fee , Curriculum evolves according to needs and interests of the students. Emphasis on conversation and composition, reading and discussion of selected texts and videotapes; oral reports required. Conducted entirely in Russian.
Prerequisites: five semesters of college-level Russian, or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission.
$15.00= Language Resource Fee, $15.00 = Materials Fee , Continuation of
RUSS S4333H
.
Introduction to the architectural history and neighborhood development of New York City, focusing on extant buildings erected for all socioeconomic classes and for a variety of uses. The history of architecture in all parts of the City is traced through lectures and walking tours. Requires the instructor's permission for registration after 7/3. Students requiring permission can contact
trob@pipeline.com
.
This course is a study of romantic poetry and poetics but does not approach its subject from the belated perspective of the Victorians or the Moderns. Instead, the famous Romantics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries are viewed proleptically, from the vantage point of early and mid 18th-century poets who established the modern criteria and generated the forms and ideas later ingeniously personalized by the poets we customarily refer to as the Romantics. Indeed, though we shall spend the concluding half of our study with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, our study begins with the neoclassical romanticism of Pope, Thomson, Akenside, the Wartons, Gray, and Goldsmith. As such, our reading entails a study of lyric trends bridging 18th - and 19th - century verse and of related discourses in aesthetic psychology, moral philosophy, experimental religion, natural description, and affective criticism. We shall attend closely to rhetorical and prosodic elements, with a view to characteristic genres (ode, epistle, georgic, epitaph), innovative hybrids and new forms (elegy, the "conversational" poem). Recommended and required readings in prose are of the period and include theoretical and critical writings by our poets.
Prerequisites: enrollment in the M.A. Program in Climate and Society.
During the third and final term of study for the 12-month M.A. Program in Climate and Society, students must complete either a thesis or internship and simultaneously enroll in EESC W4405. The summer internship requires a minimum of 140 hours of professional participation during the Summer Term in a position related to core issues of concern to the Program. The selected position must be approved by the Director of the M.A. Program by a specified date in the Spring Semester preceding the Summer Term. The position must be substantive in nature and must constitute a practical, professional experience. Students will be evaluated on the basis of oral and written updates on the work, a student internship report to be submitted at the end of the Summer Term, and on the basis of a supervisor report form to be submitted by the site supervisor for the internship.
This course explores how women's experiences of violence in conflict are guided by traditional patriarchal views of femininity, and furthermore how this violence influences their agencies and their realization of human rights. Through academic texts, documents produced by the U.N. and NGOs globally, academic experts, and documentaries, we will explore a wide range of women's experiences of violence in conflict, including: the relationship between domestic violence in the private/home space and the violence of war in the public space; how the rape of women is used to decipher and forge the borders/boundaries of imagined, emerging nations, as in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; debates on women terrorists, suicide bombers, and freedom fighters; and sexual violence against women in the U.S. military.
No foreign language required.Translation is at once a process, a procedure, and a metaphor. The practice of translation brings out our hidden prejudices, our ingrained biases; notions of the literary text that we take for granted come to the foreground and call on us to make crucial choices, aesthetic and political. In this short course, we'll see how the problems of translation "translate" over to the writing of fiction and poetry. By recuperating volition and agency in the encounter with the authority(ies) present in any given text, the writer finds openings in and through translation. We'll explore the generative aspects of translation and "misĀ translation": how translating might open up new reserves oflanguage for us to mine; how it might loosen our grip on our own "voice" and let in others; and conversely, how our own language might affect our encounter with a foreign or faraway voice.
Prerequisites:
ECON W3211
Intermediate Microeconomics and
ECON W3213
Intermediate Macroeconomics.
Equivalent to
ECON W4415
. Introduction to the systematic treatment of game theory and its applications in economic analysis.
Why do we still laugh at comic works from nearly 2500 years ago, comedies that have outlived their generations? An examination of the different forms of staged comedy throughout the centuries, beginning with foundational texts from Ancient Greece, especially Aristophanes. We consider how today's playwrights are still building on, and making reference to, primary works from the Western canon. Texts we will read range from Shakespeare, Jonson and Restoration comedies, to Wilde, Beckett, Hansberry, Tennessee Williams, Pinter, and Churchill. We will also cover contemporary work seen on the stages of New York, including short comic plays, stand up, and physical comedy. Attention will be given to comic characters, comic pretense, wit, humor, comedy of errors, comic gestures, comic archetypes, farce, cross-dressing, satiric comedy, comic relief, tragicomedy, romantic comedy, and theatre of the absurd. This course will be of special interest to serious students of comedy. When possible, class outings make use of current New York City productions.
Prerequisites:
ECON W3211
and
W3213
. Types of market failures and rationales for government intervention in the economy. Benefit-cost analysis and the theory of public goods. Positive and normative aspects of taxation. The U.S. tax structure.
Prerequisites:
ECON W3211
Intermediate Microeconomics and
ECON W3213
Intermediate Macroeconomics.
Equivalent to
ECON W4500
. The theory of international trade, comparative advantage and the factor endowments explanation of trade, analysis of the theory and practice of commercial policy, economic integration. International mobility of capital and labor, the North-South debate.
An introduction to the strategies and fundamental bioengineering design criteria in the development of biomaterials and tissue engineered grafts. Material structural-functional relationships, biocompatibility in terms of material and host responses. Through discussions, readings, and a group design project, students acquire an understanding of cell-material interactions and identify the parameters critical in the design and selection of biomaterials for biomedical applications.
In his 1924 book, The Seven Lively Arts, cultural critic Gilbert Seldes wrote, "With those who hold that a comic strip cannot be a work of art I shall not traffic." This course will take a prolonged look at this form of art in order to trace the history of comics and graphic novels in America. Focusing on representative texts that define and redefine the medium, we will learn how to approach comics as a distinct literary and visual form, while familiarizing ourselves with the critical vocabulary of "sequential art." By examining the graphic novel with an eye toward the literary, the course will explore a variety of genres and the ways they deploy conventional literary forms such as allegory, epic, character, setting, symbolism, and metaphor. We will consider how comics resist, represent, and entrench dominant cultural ideologies about power, myth, heroism, humor, adolescence, gender, sexuality, family, poverty, religion, censorship, and the immigrant experience. The course will provide students with the critical tools to read this key vehicle of contemporary creative expression. Readings will include seminal works and newer classics, by Gaiman, Bell, Miller, Moore, Crumb, Bell, Spiegelman, Ware, Derf, and shorter pieces by many others. In addition, we will read selections from texts on graphic narrative theory and comics history, beginning with Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Students must attend the first lecture. Instructor permission is required for registration after 5/18.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 Intermediate Microeconomics and ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macroeconomics. This course is equivalent to ECON GU4625. Microeconomics is used to study who has an incentive to protect the environment. Government’s possible and actual role in protecting the environment is explored. How do technological change, economic development, and free trade affect the environment? Emphasis on hypothesis testing and quantitative analysis of real-world policy issues.
Prerequisites:
COMS W3134
Data structures in Java,
COMS W3136
Data Structures with C/C++, or
COMS W3137
Honors Data Structures and Algorithms.
Provides a broad understanding of the basic techniques for building intelligent computer systems. Topics include state-space problem representations, problem reduction and and-or graphs, game playing and heuristic search, predicate calculus, and resolution theorem proving, AI systems and languages for knowledge representation, machine learning and concept formation and other topics such as natural language processing may be included as time permits.
Overview of Artificial Intelligence (AI) covering Search, Problem Solving, Game Playing, Knowledge Representation, Propositional logic, Prediate Calculus (first order logic), Reasoning under certainty, Machine Learning, and other topics in AI (including vision, natural language processing, and robotics) as time permits.
Many of us want to write memoirs, but families-troubled or not-are loaded territory. Memories conflict with family lore; trauma in the past can trigger trouble in the present; and only the dead don't mind when you spill their secrets. How do we navigate wisely, mining recollections without either slipping into solipsism or pandering to an imagined audience? In this class we'll look at writers who have done it, such as James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, Vivian Gornick, Richard Rodriguez, and Sister Souljah, to trace their fault lines and unearth their strategies for remaining faithful to their readers while truthful to their lived experience. This is a writing-intensive course, and students will write and workshop several family scenes. With the student work in hand, we'll be able to explore issues of voice and point of view, and ways to gain enough emotional distance from characters to make them both believable and three-dimensional. We'll build these scenes into a few full-length stories or, if a student wishes, chapters for a larger work.
Prerequisites: Refer to course syllabus.
The course is an introductory level course on the various aspects of Algorithmic and Quantitative Trading. The course will put significant emphasis on topics related to execution and to greater extent to quantitative trading. The course will put large emphasis on practical consideration in the general area of quantitative trading, and in particular in the equities world. Some of the topics that will be covered. Market participants, the mechanics of trading, order books, exchanges, ATS, ECNs, etc. Market micro structure, routing, rules, market impact, covariance matrix estimation in various time frames, dynamic and optimal trading, statistical arbitrage, portfolio optimization. The course homework will include working with data sets at various frequencies.
Prerequisites:
COMS W3134
,
W3136
, or
W3137
. Introduction to robotics from a computer science perspective. Topics include coordinate frames and kinematics, computer architectures for robotics, integration and use of sensors, world modeling systems, design and use of robotic programming languages, and applications of artificial intelligence for planning, assembly, and manipulation.
Introduction to robotics from a computer science perspective. Topics include coordinate frames and kinematics, computer architectures for robotics, integration and use of sensors, world modeling systems, design and use of robotic programming languages, and applications of artificial intelligence for planning, assembly, and manipulation.
Prerequisites: any introductory course in linear algebra and any introductory course in statistics are both required. Highly recommended:
COMS W4701
or knowledge of Artificial Intelligence.
Topics from generative and discriminative machine learning including least squares methods, support vector machines, kernel methods, neural networks, Gaussian distributions, linear classification, linear regression, maximum likelihood, exponential family distributions, Bayesian networks, Bayesian inference, mixture models, the EM algorithm, graphical models and hidden Markov models. Algorithms implemented in Matlab.
Prerequisites: Any introductory course in linear algebra and any introductory course in statistics are both required. Highly recommended: COMS W4701 or knowledge of Artificial Intelligence.
Topics from generative and discriminative machine learning including least squares methods, support vector machines, kernel methods, neural networks, Gaussian distributions, linear classification, linear regression, maximum likelihood, exponential family distributions, Bayesian networks, Bayesian inference, mixture models, the EM algorithm, graphical models and hidden Markov models. Algorithms implemented in MATLAB.
This course endeavors to understand the development of the peculiar and historically conflictual relationship that exists between France, the nation-states that are its former African colonies, and other contemporary African states. It covers the period from the 19th century colonial expansion through the current 'memory wars' in French politics and debates over migration and colonial history in Africa. Historical episodes include French participation in and eventual withdrawal from the Atlantic Slave Trade, emancipation in the French possessions, colonial conquest, African participation in the world wars, the wars of decolonization, and French-African relations in the contexts of immigration and the construction of the European Union. Readings will be drawn extensively from primary accounts by African and French intellectuals, dissidents, and colonial administrators. However, the course offers neither a collective biography of the compelling intellectuals who have emerged from this relationship nor a survey of French-African literary or cultural production nor a course in international relations. Indeed, the course avoids the common emphasis in francophone studies on literary production and the experiences of elites and the common focus of international relations on states and bureaucrats. The focus throughout the course is on the historical development of fields of political possibility and the emphasis is on sub-Saharan Africa.
In this class we will consider the various forms and functions of humor in written prose, discussing techniques and approaches to humor writing. Students will write their own humorous stories and essays which we will read and discuss in class, focusing not only on what is or isn't funny, but on how humor can be advantageously used to increase the power of an overall piece. The class will also break down stories, novels, and essays from a variety of authors-Bill Hicks' political satire; the darkly comedic fiction of Barry Hannah and Paul Beatty; the absurd humor of Tina Fey and Baratunde Thurston; Anthony Lane's charming British snarkiness; Spy Magazine's sharply parodic voice; Woody Allen's one-liners; Lena Dunham's zeitgeist comedy-in an effort to better understand what makes their humor work. Students will be asked to write stories inspired and influenced by these authors. As we critique each other's work, we will investigate strategies related to the craft of humor writing, including self-deprecation, political satire, humor and the other, going blue, dark comedy, schtick, humor as a means vs. humor as an end, crossing the line, and how to write funny without sacrificing substance.
The course focuses on the nexus between energy and security as it reveals in the policies and interaction of leading energy producers and consumers. Topics include: hydrocarbons and search for stability and security in the Persian Gulf, Caspian basin, Eurasia, Africa and Latin America; Russia as a global energy player; role of natural gas in the world energy balance and European energy security; transformation of the global energy governance structure; role and evolution of the OPEC; introduction into energy economics; dynamics and fundamentals of the global energy markets; IOCs vs NOCs; resource nationalism, cartels, sanctions and embargoes; Asia's growing energy needs and its geo-economic and strategic implications; nuclear energy and challenges to non-proliferation regime; alternative and renewable sources of energy; climate change and attempts of environmental regulation; emerging international carbon regimes and search for optimal models of sustainable development. Special focus on implications of the shale revolution and technological innovations on U.S. energy security.
Focuses on advanced topics in computer architecture, illustrated by case studies from classic and modern processors. Fundamentals of quantitative analysis. Pipelining. Memory hierarchy design. Instruction-level and thread-level parallelism. Data-level parallelism and graphics processing units. Multiprocessors. Cache coherence. Interconnection networks. Multi-core processors and systems-on-chip. Platform architectures for embedded, mobile, and cloud computing.
Prerequisites: equivalent.
Focuses on advanced topics in computer architecture, illustrated by case studies from classic and modern processors. Fundamentals of quantitative analysis. Pipelining. Memory hierarchy design. Instruction-level and thread-level parallelism. Data-level parallelism and graphics processing units. Multiprocessors. Cache coherence. Interconnection networks. Multi-core processors and systems-on-chip. Platform architectures for embedded, mobile, and cloud computing.
The interaction of intelligence and political decision-making in the U.S., other Western democracies, Russia and China. Peculiarities of intelligence in the Middle East (Israel, Iran, Pakistan). Intelligence analyzed both as a governmental institution and as a form of activity, with an emphasis on complex relations within the triangle of intelligence communities, national security organizations, and high-level political leadership. Stages and disciplines of intelligence process. Intelligence products and political decision-making. The function of intelligence considered against the backdrop of rapid evolution of information technologies, changing meaning of homeland security, and globalization. Particular emphasis on the role of intelligence in the prevention of terrorism and WMD proliferation.