Spring 2026

So on this page, I’ll just talk about my classes during the Spring 2026 semester.

CS 6515: Introduction to Graduate Algorithms

TR 2:00-3:15

No finals, 3 midterms (25% each), 7-8 HWs (25%)

Homework 1 (due 1/29)

Score: 20/20.

Me on 2/6: Ok, we’re off to a good start. Q1 and Q4 were the two graded ones. My only concern was with Q1, since it didn’t seem too much like a divide-and-conquer problem aside from calling merge sort. But I guess that that was the intended solution.

Me on 1/31: Pretty doable; problem 2 was dropped and the rest were fairly quick, too.

Me on 1/29: I finished CS 6515 HW 1 pretty quickly (like 2-3 hours?).

Homework 2 (due 2/5)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/5: Ok Q3 wasn’t bad, it was pretty standard. I decided to just leave Q2 and Q4 be because I don’t need perfection. After solving Q3, I worked on Q1, and I managed to get to a point where it’s at least submittable. I ended up submitting at around 3 PM, right before leaving for my CS 7637 lecture. I don’t really want to look at this again, but the homework wasn’t too bad overall, aside from Q1.

Me on 2/4: Bro I just spent an hour on Q1 last night, and I can’t work out the details… I have an idea, but it’s pretty complex. Q2 seems much more doable, and I think I have an approach that I just need to write up. That leaves Q3 and Q4… Update: Solved Q2? At least, I finished a write-up for it. Update 2: Solved Q4…? I think. I also polished up my solution to Q2, and I’m feeling better about that one. I still have Q1 and Q3, though, and it’s due at the end of tomorrow…

Me on 2/3: Umm, yeah… This is harder than Homework 1. I’m kinda trolling but we’ll get through it trust.

Homework 3 (due 2/12)

In progress.

Midterm 1 (on 2/19)

TBA.

Midterm 2 (on 3/19)

TBA.

Midterm 3 (on 4/9)

TBA.

CS 7634: AI Storytelling in Virtual Worlds

MW 9:30-10:45

No finals, no midterms, 2 group projects (35% each), 1 exercise (10%), summaries (20%)

Story Generation Exercise (due 1/25)

Score: 10/10.

Me on 2/3: Yeah, when I saw this grade appear on Canvas, I just silently said “Oh nice” to myself.

Me on 1/31: Really easy. Ask ChatGPT to write a 1500+ word crime mystery and write your review on how it did!

Me on 1/22: I made progress on it; I just told ChatGPT to write a 1500+ word crime mystery. I still have to write my assessment of it, though.

Project 1 Proposal Presentation (due 2/15)

In progress.

Me on 2/9: I met up with my team irl for the first time, and they’re pretty chill. We got started on the presentation, and we have a lot of time to finish it. The workload is also pretty light.

Me on 2/7: Ok so I think our group is planning to meet irl next Monday. I’ll have to skip my diff geo class and possibly even my complex class, but I couldn’t really find other times that also worked for them.

CS 7637: Knowledge-Based AI

TR 3:30-4:45

No finals, 2 take-home midterms (10%, 15%), 1 individual final project (15%), 4 milestones (20%), 5 HWs (25%), participation (15%)

Milestone 1 (due 1/30)

Score: 100/100 (Performance), 87/100 (Journal).

Me on 2/9: Ok I’m confused, they updated my score to 87 (from 85), but I don’t see any explanation as to why they did that. Well, I guess that’s two extra points, so I can’t complain about that.

Me on 2/8: For the journal, I knew I didn’t use the terms from the course, but they also took off 10 points since I supposedly didn’t justify my answers to two of the problems. The problems were super basic, so there wasn’t much room to explain anything anyway.

Me on 2/7: Ok nvm peer feedback was quick, though they did have a specific structure for comments that we had to follow.

Me on 2/2: This was pretty easy; 50% was hardcoding one line of code to make it pass one test case and 50% was writing a short journal. We also have to write peer feedback after each milestone, which is lowkey harder than the actual milestone (at least for now).

Me on 1/30: I went back to my apartment after hanging out with a friend and did my CS 7637 milestone, which took around 30 minutes at most.

Homework 1 (due 2/9)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/7: YES!! The deadline was extended from 2/6 to 2/9!! Thank you, course staff!! Unfortunately, this assignment is still pretty tedious, and I don’t want to finish it… Update: I finished. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad, I just had to focus hard enough and get rid of my hesitation.

Me on 2/6: Starting this assignment at 12 PM on the day that it’s due was probably not the best idea. Although none of it is technically difficult, there is a lot of stuff to actually perform, and then you have to compile it all in a report, complete with tables and screenshots of AI chat logs. This is pretty annoying, to say the least.

Me on 2/5: I’m kind of tired today, so I’ll start this tomorrow, which, yes, is the day of. If I suddenly get a burst of energy, then I may start this later tonight.

Milestone 2 (due 2/13)

In progress.

Midterm 1 (due 2/27)

TBA.

Midterm 2 (due 4/10)

TBA.

ISYE 6416: Computational Statistics

TR 12:30-1:45

Final exam period: R 5/7 11:20-2:10

Final exam (25%), 2 midterms (25% each), 11? HWs (25%)

Homework 1 (due 1/27)

Score: 9.5/10.

Me on 1/31: Got a few points taken off on random problems. Part 1 was easy, just copy from the slides. Part 2 required a mini report, which I bluffed but somehow got 4.9/5 on it.

Homework 2 (due 2/1)

Score: 8.5/10.

Me on 2/3: Welp, I guess I shouldn’t have been so confident about part 1. I lost 0.9 points on Q3 and 0.6 points on Q4 since apparently I didn’t copy the correct answers from the slides. I’m assuming that he gave me full points on part 2, so that’s cool.

Me on 2/2: Once again, part 1 was easy since all of the answers could be found in the slides. Part 2 actually required that we write code in R in order to answer some questions. This part took 3-4 hours, and I’m not even sure if I wrote enough. We’ll see after it gets graded, I guess.

Homework 3 (due 2/10)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/9: So apparently they already posted the solutions to HW 3 XDD but part 2 is still mostly unsolved since it’s more of a project. I still have to do it, but hopefully it only takes a few hours at most. I also updated a few of my part 1 solutions just in case (while consulting the already-posted solutions lol). Update (1-2 hours later): After goofing off, I finished part 2. This was made 100x easier since the instructors posted R code that basically already solves the problem. We just had to use that code and write up some answers to the questions, which wasn’t too bad (at least, with the code already provided). That being said, I can’t really imagine finishing this on time without that code.

Me on 2/8: I’m taking a break from part 2 to work on MATH 7018 HW 2.

Me on 2/7: I wrote up half of Q1a on the treadmill lol. Update: Ok this time part 1 should be mostly good. Some of the questions were the same as some ones on the practice midterm (complete with answers), so that was nice. Most of the rest were almost verbatim in the slides, but there may be 1-2 questions where I could lose some points, probably. I still have to do part 2.

Midterm 1 (on 2/12)

TBA.

Me on 2/10: I’ll probably start studying tomorrow. I’m allowed to bring in two pages of cheat sheets, and the practice midterm doesn’t seem too hard.

Midterm 2 (on 3/19)

TBA.

Final Exam (on 5/7)

TBA.

MATH 6321: Functions of a Complex Variable I

MW 12:30-1:45

Final exam period: W 5/6 11:20-2:10

Final exam (30%), 2 midterms (20% each), 5-6? HWs (30%)

Homework 1 (due 1/28)

Score: 97/100.

Me on 2/4: Got my grade back, and I was at the class median. I’ll see in a bit what I lost points on. Update: Lost 2 points on Q3 for underexplaining certain steps and 1 point on Q6 for a technicality.

Me on 1/31: This took around 5-6 hours and had 6 problems. I thought it would be hard but didn’t turn out as bad as expected. Hardest problems were the first and third ones.

Me on 1/27: I finished. It took a little bit, but I solved Q1 and Q2 yesterday (though I spent most of the day watching YouTube and goofing off), and Q4, Q5, Q3, and Q6 today, in that order. Q5 in particular was pretty cool, and I had fun solving it.

Homework 2 (due 2/11)

In progress.

Me on 2/10: Radius of convergence is weird. I’m worried that I’ll accidentally write something that’s technically inaccurate despite getting the right answers.

Me on 2/9: I started. Most of the problems seem fairly standard, but there are 8 problems, which is more than last time. Update: I solved half of Q1, and I’m going to bed.

Midterm 1 (on 2/25)

TBA.

Midterm 2 (on 4/8)

TBA.

Final Exam (on 5/6)

TBA.

MATH 6455: Differential Geometry I

MW 11:00-12:15

I have no idea what this class has.

From the class notes:

“I would like for each student to make either one large “project” presentation during the semester or else a number of smaller in class presentations roughly equaling a one hour or hour and 10 minute presentation.”

Me on 2/4: Announcement: “it’s probably a good idea if we/I know something about what you might want to talk about on a particular day, and…

It might be a good idea to come by my office and talk to me about what you plan to present on a particular topic before that takes place.”

Ok, so I’ll try to find a topic from the notes and present as close to the last day as possible.

MATH 7018: Probabilistic Methods in Combinatorics

MW 3:30-4:45

Final exam period: F 5/1 2:40-5:30

Final exam (30%), 2 midterms (15% each), 5 HWs (40%)

Homework 1 (due 1/23)

Score: 20/20.

Me on 2/2: I was at Hattie B’s with a friend on 1/30 when I got my grade back. I was pleasantly surprised to see it, especially with him watching lol.

Me on 1/31: The first three problems were standard, the last one was also normal but required some more work (with lin alg knowledge), and the fourth one was the hardest and it took a few hours.

Me on 1/23: I worked on Q4 this morning, miraculously finishing it after some clever thinking. I then sent it to montresor2329, who didn’t point out any flaws upon a cursory glance, so it should be ok, I think.

Me on 1/22: After I woke up, I solved Q5 and thought I also solved Q4, but I’m still kind of stuck on the latter. At least I have all of tomorrow to work on it.

Me on 1/21: I solved the first three of five problems, and they honestly weren’t too hard. However, the last two seem like a decent step up from those, and it’s due on Friday.

Me on 1/20: I (think I) solved 1/5 problems on the homework. It is due at the end of this Friday, so I’ll have to step things up.

Homework 2 (due 2/10)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/10: Still stuck on Q3 as of this morning. I sent my remaining solutions to montresor2329 just in case. Update: Ok so I solved Q3 with a fair amount of help online. I finished writing it up, so I’m going to submit it. There’s a chance that I will want to go back and review my solutions again, but for now, I’m done. Onto MATH 6321 HW 2!

Me on 2/9: Finished Q4 I think (if I’m wrong, I’m wrong), so I just have Q3 and Q5. I’ve been pretty stuck on Q3, though. Update: Skipped Q3 for now to go to Q5, which seemed hard at first with all of the variables. It was definitely harder than Q1, Q2, and Q4, but after spending some time on it, I solved it. That still leaves Q3, though. I’m going back to ISYE 6416 HW 3 first, though.

Me on 2/8: I started. I finished Q1, which wasn’t too hard despite me being super unfocused. I’m now doing Q2, but it should be ok too. Update (one hour later): I finished Q2 as well. Q1 was literally done in the textbook (albeit with less detail), and Q2 was very similar to an example in the textbook. Update 2: I’m now like halfway done with Q4, and I need to understand a certain part of the textbook to do the other half.

Midterm 1 (on 2/18)

TBA.

Midterm 2 (on 4/8)

TBA.

Final Exam (on 5/1)

TBA.