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Randy Pausch's Talk Summary

Who is Randy Pausch?

Maryland Randolph Frederick Pausch, is a known computer scientist, an educator, and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in Columbia, Maryland. Pausch recieved his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Brown University in 1982, and his PhD in Computer Science from CMU. He worked in several tech companies, like Adobe Systems, and won tons of awards, from ACM in 2007. He died from Pancreatic Cancer in 2008.

What was he known for?

Randhy Pausch was mostly known for his work in Design and Human-Computer Interaction. In addition to his work in research and academia, Pausch is known for his famous lecture "Really Acheiving Your Childhood Dreams", and his New York Time best-seller book: "The Last Lecture".

Five points that I liked in his lecture in time management

1- Time is more important and valuable that money, becuase money can come later but time can't
2- Be sure that I enjoy what I'm doing, and if not, I should change, though this will take a lot of work, but its worth it.
3- Ask why before you do anything, and if you're not convinced about it, then ask why if I don't do it and see if its worth the time or not
4- Manage your time for things in order of importance and due time (the time table that he showed in the presentation)
5- Try to decrease interruptions, such long chats and notifcation sounds of different apps (emails at his time), as much as you can. This will save you a lot of time that you can spend later in more important tasks.
6- One extra point is the I liked the idea of giving thank you notes; it's a very unique thing to do.

Prof. Christos Lecture Questions

What is a decision problem?

A decision problem is a kind of problem that has only two outputs: yes or no. The method to solve a decision problem is by using as algorithm called a decision procedure. One example of an algorithm would be long division.

What does it mean for a decision problem to be decidable?

If a decision problem can be solved by an algorithm, it’s then called decidable.

What is the class P? What is the class NP?

The class P consists of those problems that are solvable in polynomial time while class NP consists of questions for which an answer can be verified in polynomial time is NP, which stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time".

What is the intuitive meaning of the P versus NP question?

P is a set of relatively easy problems, and NP is a set that includes what seem to be very, very hard problems, so P = NP would imply that the apparently hard problems actually have relatively easy solutions.

If you resolve the P versus NP question, how much richer will you be?

It’s worth 1 million, but probably the one who solves it will get more than that.

Prof. Hammoud Lecture Questions

What is Big Data?

It’s a more complex type of datasets. These data sets are so large that traditional data processing algorithms can’t process them. Nowadays, these’re used to solve problems in different sectors that were unsolvable for a very long time.

What is cloud computing?

It’s basically a way to deliver computing services through the internet “the cloud”. Examples of those services would be servers, storage, databases, analytics, etc.

Is cloud computing a novel technology per se or an amalgamation of several traditional technologies?

Cloud computing itself is not novel, it’s a new view of computing. It uses traditional technologies to store and deliver things but does that in a new way: in the cloud.

What are the 3 major cloud computing service models?

1- Software as a service (SaaS)
2- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
3- Platform as a service (PaaS)

Name at least 3 real-life problems that cloud computing can help solve them.

1- Sharing real-time analytics between different branches of a tech company
2- Sharing files on two computers continuously without needing to upload them manually each time
3- Use strong computing power without having it physically.

What is the economic/business model of cloud computing?

“pay as you go” model, which reduces the time, money and people it takes to build and deploy infrastructure and applications.

Prof. Riley Lecture Questions

Incident 1: Targeting Qatar National Bank in 2016

Attackers hacked Qatar National Bank in 2016 and dumped online 1.5 gigabytes worth of customers data that contained bank credentials, telephone numbers, payment card details, and dates of birth. Customers of that bank were not impacted financially but there was a breach of data of some of QNB’s Qatar-based customers. QNB investigated this cyber-attack in coordination with all concerned parties.

Incident 2: Targeting the Qatar News Agency in 2017

Attackers hacked Qatar New Agency and posted fabricated political statements. The attackers broke into the account of QNA in Twitter by unknown entity. The government of Qatar was impacted by this attack. Al-Jazeera made investigated this incident and linked it to the people who are responsible for this attack.

Prof Giselle Lecture Questions

Why did we move from punch cards to programming languages? What does that tell you about the purpose of programming languages?

Because programming languages are more efficient and offer things that punch cards couldn’t do, like structure and debugging. With that efficiency, languages can solve problems that are present in other fields, instead of only achieving communication with the computer. This tells us that the purpose of programming languages is not only to give instructions to computers, but also to give those instructions efficiently and meaningfully.

There are hundreds of different programming languages out there. Why do you think we need so many?

We know that programming languages are mainly used to solve problems, but the problem is that different problems require different tools. Having only one programming language can maybe solve a set of problems, but then most others problems cannot be solved using only this language, or maybe they can be solved but it will take a lot of time. While on the other hand, having several programming languages offers will offer us different tools that can solve different problems efficiently.

What are some drawbacks of a programming language you use? How would you like it to be different? Think of specific examples.

Some drawbacks in programming languages that we use today is that that don’t all follow a set of rules in terms of syntax and error. This slows down – for example- tech companies because as they grow their services, they will need to use more programming languages, which software engineers must learn, and since they all don’t have the same syntax and restrictions, there will be a lot of setbacks during the development process. I would like that programming languages companies come up with a set of rules that they all must follow. For instance, they can remove indentation (like in python) and use curly brackets instead (like in java).

If you were going to create a new programming language, how would you start? What do you need to define?

I will need first to understand what a programming language actually is (like is scratch a language?), and then understand the rules that I need to follow to give my programming language a robust base (for example the use of memory to be optimal). And finally define the purpose of my programming language to know what tools need to be provided.

Prof Gianni Lecture Questions

How do you define AI?

AI can be defined as any intelligent machine that’s inspired by human intelligence

Can you name at least three different sub-fields of AI?

Machine learning
representation learning
deep learning

AI has been around since about 70 years so far. Why is it booming right now?

Because of the computing power, the theoretical concepts were present many years ago, but there was no sufficient computing power that can apply these concepts

Can you name at least three application sectors where robots are being largely employed? What are the reasons?

Warehouses
Logistics
Hospitals
To reduce human labor and get rid of jobs that consume time and can be automated

Can you identify three major challenges for a wheeled autonomous robot performing a 24h surveillance task in a large facility? (e.g., something like Mall of Qatar)

Unpredictable surroundings (for example a child running towards the robot)
People messing with the robot
Slippery surface

Ideas and concepts are retreived from the book Deep Learning

Prof. Madhavi Lecture Questions

What is a genome/DNA and why is it important to know?

It’s a completed set of information that hold an organism’s genetics. It’s important because it stores all necessary information that an organism needs to function

Does CS have a significant role to play in studying why we are tall, organized, athletic, or healthy?

Yes it does. Because there is an important section of computer science which is called computational biology that helps contributing to that field (The field of studyin genetics).

What are some of the important questions in biology and medicine that can be addressed with computer science?

Can computer science provide healthcare in a more effective way than humans?
Can computer science algorithms predict things such as sickness before the doctor notices it?
Can computer science solve long standing problems that biologists and doctors couldn’t solve, or at least couldn’t solve it efficiently? (like it solved protein folding)

Is it enough to study humans and the human genome?

Although humans are the most interesting thing to learn in that field, we need to look into other things to study genome more like animals and plants.

Is the industry interested in computational biology, or is it largely academic research?

Yes since it’s a field that’s applicable and can be implemented in real life scenarios (unlike, for example, deep learning when it was first founded where there was no computational power efficient to implement its theories). In addition to that, The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects a growth rate of 15% for all computer and information research scientists in the field of computational biology.