Inglorious Culmanners

Posted on October 10, 2017 by Spencer

Wake up really early to meet Ruth and Betty for breakfast. But they both apparently have slept through their own absurd ungodly waking time. Instead, I use the time to study my ML project and get a start on the AGT homework.

Learning Contexts

After a short nap… have an amazing Reliable and Interpretable AI class. That class is definitely my \(\epsilon\)-coolest class (only by \(\epsilon\)). We learn about learning contexts for making probabilistic predictions. To clarify: a simple model for predicting natural language is to look two words back, then pick the word that comes most often after those two words. This is a pretty crappy model that only works with metric zettabytes of data. But, when you’re predicting more structured things (like filling in holes in code)–you can do much better than looking at the past two tokens, usually. You have to find the appropriate context (maybe the token after the last curly brace?). To do this, you define a language for writing context-picking programs; then you search over short programs in that language and figure out which contexts so defined let you predict things best. Super cool stuff! Slides

Skip Mittagsseminar to have lunch with Martin–we walk back to Culmann and I eat tacos while he works on some homework. Go to Randomized Algorithms, then to an exercise session for RIAI, then Martin and I print our homeworks and work for a little bit.

Dominotion

Soon I go back to Culmann, where Ruth has been planning an excursion for some cheap Domino’s. We go order our CHF 5-special pizzas; I adjourn to the CSE lounge to claim my free beer for the day (you heard that right, the hometown of free as in Linux ahem <the blood and tears of countless programmers> and free as in MicroManager ahem <a pile of steaming C++ hacked together in academic sweatshops> now offers 1 free beer a day). I have to fill out a really frustrating quiz on the lounge rules, which are posted exactly nowhere, to register my Legi for the beer, but once it’s done I rejoin Ruth and my hot fresh pizza. We chow down at Culmann. Ruth puts honey on her pizza, then eats half a pint of my Stracciatelli ice cream from Italy as compensation for waiting for me filling out the quiz #legit

Play some foosball, goof off, do a bit of work, then–

Inglorious Basterds!

Finally get to watch this madcap flick that I’ve wanted to see for AGES. What a crazy movie. I love Tarantino. Ruth somehow manages to fall asleep in the last 20 minutes, a feat worthy of my own dear mother ;)

And then sleep. Ooog, exhaustion.