RoYa's COSMOS '05 Blog

12th posting

2005-08-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

I can't believe its almost over. I've had a great time. Today all we did was work on our project, power point, and presentation. It was very useful. That's it... I know it's short but that's all that's happened.

My 11th posting

2005-08-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Wow we are almost done. Today we had a lecture from Larry on binary numbers. Of course he started with the all famous quote "There are 10 kinds of people in this world: ones that understand binary and ones that don't!" Then we came to the lab to do more on our project and on the power point presentation. I felt that we had same progress but there is still a lot to work on. I hope we can finish it before Wednesday, or even more importantly Friday. Then later we got a discussion with Joe on what we feel about Stealth. Then he taught us how to multiply with an abacus and how to divide with a slide rule. Then we came back to the computer lab to do our blogs and to keep working on our final projects. Today has been productive.

10th posting

2005-07-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

Today was most definitely the best day yet at COSMOS for my cluster. We first took a walk to the nueroscience lab which was a 45 minute walk away from UCSD. There we learned more about robots and how they learn to differentiate between 2 types of metal, "the good" and "the bad." Also there we rode on a segway which was exciting. I want to buy one now! Then we walked back and took a much shorter route which took about 10 minutes so we hung around for a while until we ate lunch. After we ate lunch then hung around for a while then set off for the movies. We watched Stealth which was a very interesting movie that related to artificial intelligence. I enjoyed this day very much. It was an exciting day full of field trips.

9th posting

2005-07-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today was awesome. The day actually started with a kind of interesting morning lecture on global warming. I think that it caught my attention in some ways but other things that he said I didn't really have a desire to learn about. Anyways, later we went to our class and had a presentation on how to make a good presentation and a good poster for the final. We were shown an example of a very poorly made presentation and a presentation that incorporated all the different kinds of special actions. Then we went to the lab for a while and I did some preparation for our final. Later on during the day we went to our first "field trip" and we saw future items that will be produced for advancement in computers. It was very interesting. I especially liked the toys we could play with during and after the presentation.

8th posting

2005-07-25T18:45:00.000-07:00

I've been a little behind on my blogs so I'm going to update now. I'm sorry that I've been behind but I'm on it now. Today was pretty interesting. In the morning Larry gave us a lot of information on algorithms and how people use them in programming. He showed us how changing an equation by a little could make a huge difference in time when trying to calculate large numbers, like in billions. Later on in the day we went to the lab for a while to practice algorithms. Then later in the day Christine gave us a LONG lecture on pattern recognition systems and their importance of them. Then we went to the lab and worked on pattern recognition system simulations.

7th posting

2005-07-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

Today we had the most enjoyable morning lecture. I think I enjoyed it mostly because the topic this morning was on something similar to artificial intelligence. Obviously I had a lot of prior knowledge with this topic and I think that might be the reason why I enjoyed it most (also it had mini clips or robots playing soccer). Then in our cluster we did no long lecture so I had a good/ interesting morning. Later on in the day we went and checked out the supercomputer lab which was not anything like I expected. I guess if in the tour we were shown how fast one of those computers worked it would have been more interesting. I didn't like he fact that we were just exposed to them and not given a demonstration. It was like looking at a box of metal with cool lights.

6th entry

2005-07-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Another day of long tedious numbers. Larry talked about more numbers for google. Also we did different types of sorting methods and found which process was the easiest and the most efficient. We worked a little more with Christine on artificial intelligence and some programming. I think I'm starting to understand it a little more. Also we got a long hoemwork reading packet for tonight. Since we don't have that much time in the computer lab today my blog is a short one, but the day has been enjoying!

5th Posting

2005-07-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Today was very very interesting, starting from the time I woke up. Today I woke up and felt like why do I have to wake up so early this is my summer? This is the first time I felt this from the day COSMOS started. Yet, as the day went on it became more and more enjoying. We had no guest speaker in the morning so that allowed me to be a little more awake in class. Christine gave us a lecture on the theory behind the Chinese Room. It stated this theory that a computer can never think and feel like a human can. Then we were given 3 main oppositions to this theory and we had to give a small presentation supporting the opposition. The 3 oppositions were: "system reply", "robot reply", and "other minds" reply. This was a great way to start the day and was a very interesting topic. This topic led straight to the topic we discussed later on in the day with Joe: Can a machine ever be created to be very similar to a human. After a very long and interesting discussion I think the whole class/ cluster came to decision that no matter what situation is set up there is no way of knowing in the future if machines and humans could be the same, no matter how advanced the technology.

Blog Entry #4

2005-07-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

This morning we had a guest speaker talking to us about the human brain and the five simple parts of it. It was obvious that he was very interested in his studies of the human brain. Later that day we got into our clusters and worked on a pendulum simulation where we tested whether weight and/or length of the string would effect the speed at which the pendulum swung. It was concluded that the amount of weight put on the pendulum has no effect on the speed of the swing of the pendulum. On the other hand it was found that the length of the string has a tremendous effect on how fast the pendulum swings.

Blog entry #3

2005-07-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

Today was very different than any other day. We had no speaker in the morning which I enjoyed very much. Also in class we did very interesting work on artificial intelligence and when will computers be able to match the qualities of humans. I had no clue that so much work goes into creating a robot to act like a human. I think A.I. is a very interesting topic. We worked with this program Eliza which was a machine that was set up to respond like a human. I found that even the machines that seam to act like a human come out with some outrageous responses.

2nd Posting

2005-07-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

Today was a little more interesting than yesterday. Today we jumped straight into great useful information on programming. It was exciting. The lecture Larry gave on the difference between Windows and Unix was just what I needed to learn. We did some work with Java and C++. I really could not get the java to work though. It has been very hard to go to sleep at 11 and wake up at 6:30. I am not used to that sort of schedule, but other than that life outside of classes has been awesome.

My First Post

2005-07-10T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today was the REAL first day of this COSMOS program. I met my teachers Larry and Joe. Today we worked on trying to define what is a machine, what is a process, what is a algorithm, and what is a computer. Also we were introduced to the basics of programming. I hope I learn a great deal from this course so I can apply it later in my life. I enjoyed what we did outside of the class also. We did a lot of team builder activities which allowed me to get to know my roommates better.