What makes a college course popular or unpopular? I’ve long been interested in courses for non-science majors that satisfy “general education” requirements, their aim being to foster overall scientific literacy and to convey an understanding of topics that are important to society. I often teach such courses at the University of Oregon, for example a … Continue reading Online courses, supply and demand, and academic integrity
It’s February 2025 and this, like some of my other recent posts (here, here), could be a snapshot of a landscape being transformed by the roaring river of artificial intelligence. But it isn’t. Rather, I’ll describe my puzzlement that some parts of the landscape that I’m close to aren’t changing much, and speculate about the … Continue reading Why Don’t Academics Care About Artificial Intelligence?
Last term (Fall 2024) I again taught the computational image analysis course I developed a few years ago (see 2021, 2022). It was again a mixed graduate and undergraduate course, this time with an enrollment of 18: 14 graduate and 4 undergraduate. For a primarily graduate elective course, this is a large number of students; … Continue reading Image Analysis Course Recap, Fall 2024
I’m always interested to hear who won the latest Physics Nobel Prize, and today’s announcement was particularly exciting: John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” Is it surprising? Is it controversial? Apparently yes. I predicted Hopfield in response to a friend’s poll a few … Continue reading The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics — Yes, Physics!
I finally finished copying CDs onto my new ipod, my beloved white-brick old one from 2003 having died a few months ago. 220 albums on one card-sized device! It boggles the mind. When I was a kid, all we had were LPs carved out of wood. Speaking of kids, here’s K. with the plug-in USB … Continue reading ipod
The Eighteenth Elephant 