A practical lab-based course on how computers can learn to solve complex problems. In addition to lecture sessions, students will develop their own algorithms that tackle real world problems with real datasets. An emphasis will be placed on developing a strong intuition for the optimization methods that underlie the machine learning applications transforming the world today. The course will cover topics such as both constrained and unconstrained optimization methods, numeric and combinatorial optimization, and the classifiers and regressors that can be built upon these frameworks.

Programming is an important skill to learn for modern life. It is applicable in basically every field now. This course is going to teach coding from the very basics assuming that students have little to no knowledge about programming. Students will learn to code in python by writing bots to play a simplified version of Battlecode, MIT's oldest and largest programming competition. We will start simple with the basic ideas of imperative programming languages, before explaining how loops, functions, and classes work. At the end of the class there will be a tournament to see who wrote the best bot.

A brief history of film, starting from the early silent era to the 1970's. We will be looking at the progression of narrative film both domestic and international.