← summerbreak

spring semester review, part 1

20 May 2020

Spring semester's over, and summerbreak has begun! (though, summer's also over, at least here in Thailand.)

This means it's time for another semester review. Oh boy, a lot happened (looking at you, COVID-19.) Let's start with classes.

6.08 Introduction to EECS via Interconnected Embedded Systems

M1 (lec), TR2:30-5 (lab); 1‑5‑6 
→ reality: 1‑3.5‑4, virtual: 0.5‑1‑5.5

This class is so much fun. I took this class without knowing who Joe Steinmeyer is (nor that he would be teaching this class.) Joe is the best. lecturer. ever.

6.08 is one of the four available intros to EECS. I'm pretty sure it's the best one. The class meets for a one-hour weekly lecture, best described by arunwpm as a "one-hour Joe Steinmeyer talk show".

For the first eight weeks or so, there are also five hours of labs each week, and a bunch of exercises and design exercises. The labs and exercises preview various aspects of EECS surprisingly well. The design exercises are like mini-projects; four need to be done. Each of them are time-consuming but it feels really nice when you finally pull it off.

The final month is spent on a final project, which is done in groups of 4-5. My group decided to make a maze game, and it turned out pretty well.

Verdict: strong recommend. 10/10. 10/10 with rice. Did I mention that you also get a free ESP32 dev module?

18.218 Topics in Combinatorics

MWF2; 3‑0‑9
→ reality: 3‑0‑2, virtual: 3‑0‑1.5

I decided to take this class for two reasons. One, it's combinatorics, which I love; two, it's known to be very light on psets. The class was basically as I expected. The combinatorics was lovely, and the psets were few and far between.

The topic this semester is "Polytopes and Hyperplane Arrangements". Don't know what this means? Don't worry, before taking this class I didn't know either. (I definitely know it now though.)

Quick ELI'm in IMO camp: polytopes = n-dim convex polygons. Hyperplanes = (n-1)-dim spaces in n-dim spaces. Turns out polytopes and hyperplane arrangements are roughly the same thing combinatorially, and they have wayyy tooooo manyyy nice combinatorial properties.

Bonus: the handwritten class website is amazing.

18.702 Algebra II

MWF11; 3‑0‑9
→ reality: 3‑0‑3, virtual: 1‑0‑2

For some reason, which probably includes the fact that it didn't virtualize well, I feel like I don't have much to say about 18.702. Here's what I have to say, I guess:

The material in 18.702 is definitely harder and more interesting than 18.701, though the second half of the class got scaled down because of COVID-19. :(

21M.301 Harmony and Counterpoint I

MW3:30-5 (lec), W12, F4 (lab); 3‑3‑6 
→ reality: 3‑2‑1, virtual: 2‑1‑3.5

I have always wanted to compose music. In fact I have tried many times though the results were.. less than spectacular. (No I'm not sharing them.) I also wanted to actually learn music theory from a teacher.

21M.301 seemed like a really good option as it ticks all the boxes. It's also a very popular class‑I tried to get into it last semester but incoming freshmen are last in the prority queue so... (this semester I could claim that I was kicked out of the class before; this moved me up a lot in the priority queue.)

The class was pretty good, though there's actually less theory than I thought, and the theory covered is actually pretty simple in my opinion. My main takeaway is that music theory is arithmetic in Z/12Z, and well, it's not hard to math mod 12.

The highlight of this class is definitely the final project, which is a ~1-2 minute composition, which in precedented, untrying times, would be performed live by a string quartet. Although 21M.301 didn't actually cover key modulations and chromatic tones, I decided to use them in my piece because they are cool. Here's my piece, played by Musescore 3's builtin sounds, and the score.

24.900 Introduction to Linguistics

TR11-12:30 (lec), F10 (rec); 4‑0‑8
→ reality: 4‑0‑3, virtual: 4‑0‑5

Objectively, this was quite a badly run class. Psets are often posted late, lectures move very slowly, and many many things were dropped due to the combination of this slowness and COVID-19. (Here I thank COVID-19 for letting me get away with writing only 2500 words in a CI-H class!)

Nevertheless, thanks to the subject matter, I still enjoyed the class very much, and I would still recommend it. Bonus: it's also a CI-H that is very sciencey in the sense that most of the "essays" aren't really essays, and hence are easier to write.

What are these essays then? Let me explain. In various psets there will fieldwork assignments, where I needed to find a native speaker of a language I don't know and ask them to translate various words/sentences, interpret the results, and relate them to whatever topic is currently being taught. This is capped off by (in normal times) multipage reports and a proposal for further research. For an introductory class I think 24.900 manages to simulate actual research really well.

Compared to 24.917, the "informal" intro to linguistics and the only other linguistics class I've taken, 24.900 actually covers less topics, but with more depth. Whereas 24.917 is a quick tour through all the cool phenomenons in human and nonhuman languages, 24.900 is more of a base to build formal linguistic studies on. I'd say, if you like linguistics, take both!