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: 18.75/20.

Me on 2/14: Darn, I lost 1.25 on Q4 since I forgot a pretty important case. I’m glad that I aced Q1, though.

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)

Score: 20/20.

Me on 2/28: I think I saw my score on 2/25. Yay, another perfect!

Me on 2/12: After spending the whole morning making cheat sheets for ISYE 6416 Midterm 1, I am finally ready to continue this assignment. Update (5:22 PM): Ok, I don’t know if I’m just better at graphs or this homework is a lot easier than Homework 2. As I said, Q1 was very easy, and today, I solved Q2 and Q4 during lecture (which I finally attended since I came back from my exam), albeit with a small hiccup on Q2 that was easy to fix. That leaves Q3, which is definitely the hardest one on this assignment. Update (10:16 PM): After doing a lot of goofing off, I came back to this problem. Designing the algorithm was straightforward, but I wasn’t sure how to write up a formal proof of correctness, but I’ll just assume that they won’t be strict on grading it (if it even is graded).

Me on 2/11: I started. After clutching up MATH 7018 HW 2 and MATH 6321 HW 2 yesterday, jumping straight into this will be a bit rough, but we’ll get through it trust. Update (8:09 PM): I solved Q1 after like 10 minutes of thinking and 10 minutes of write-up. Update (8:26 PM): Bro Q3 is the same problem as one from my CS 3511 class in Fall 2023. I’m glad that that class posted solutions >:).

Midterm 1 (on 2/19)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/19: Just finished. I felt like the exam wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the worst thing ever either. I barely studied; I just briefly looked over FFT and skimmed over the practice midterms. I did mess up on the last problem a bit with the recurrence step, but I don’t think it should be too major. I was a bit unconfident in a few of the MCQs, but now I feel alright about almost all of them. I’m predicting around a 25-28/30 on the exam.

Homework 4 (due 2/27)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/27: This was made so much easier because I basically found the answers somewhere. That being said, Q1 and Q3 were still quite immediate. Q4 was a bit tricky, Q2a was kinda fun, and Q2b was definitely the hardest.

Me on 2/24: So apparently the due date was extended from 2/26 to 2/27. I’m pretty glad about that.

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)

Score: 9/10.

Me on 3/1: Hmm… I’m not sure what happened here.

Me on 2/12: Since I was bored, I decided to actually format what we had into an unfinished presentation with Google Slides. We still have to make it into a full presentation, but I’m still not worried about this.

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.

Project 1 Final Presentation (due 3/22)

In progress.

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: 98/100.

Me on 2/24: I actually got this grade yesterday. I’m satisfied with this score, especially given my rather picky peer review feedback and my subpar Milestone 1 journal grade.

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)

Score: 100/100 (Performance), 96/100 (Journal).

Me on 2/13: Once again, I passed enough test cases to earn a perfect score on the performance part, though it is getting close, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll actually have to try on Milestone 3. I still have to write the journal (as of 10:36 AM), which should hopefully not take too long. Update (12:32 PM): I finished. Unlike last time, I actually provided key terms from the course (somewhat), and my explanations were generally more thorough. Update (12:36 PM): I added a small additional detail and resubmitted.

Me on 2/12: Now that I finished my CS 6515 homework, I am finally ready to start this… tomorrow.

Homework 2 (due 2/23)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/23: Just submitted. This was definitely a lot shorter than Homework 1, and I still have plenty of time to make revisions if I still want to do that.

Me on 2/19: After finishing my MATH 7018 and CS 6515 exams, I can finally get started on this assignment. The problem is that I’m super tired due to minor sleep deprivation. Update: Lols they extended the deadline from 2/20 to 2/23. Thanks!!

Midterm 1 (due 2/27)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/27: Bro this was made easier because the professor basically said that we could use AI but write our answers in our own words. But the funniest part was that the test was so doable that I didn’t even need to refer to ChatGPT that much (although I did use it at first). I mostly ended up using the textbook for Q1, Q2, and Q3, and a specific research paper for Q4. Later on, I was having dinner with some friends from JSA, and then I decided to finish the rest of the test while they were talking. They didn’t seem to mind, and I managed to submit around two hours before the deadline.

Milestone 3 (due 3/13)

In progress.

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 2/11)

Score: 9.8/10.

Me on 2/15: I totally forgot how I reacted to this score, but I’m happy that I got a good score. My current course grade went up to a 92.67%!

Me on 2/11: So apparently the deadline was extended to 2/11 from 2/10. I don’t really need it, but that’s cool. I also don’t plan to update any of my answers.

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)

Score: 95/100.

Me on 2/27: So I finally got to see what I got wrong on the midterm. I lost five points on Q2 because I thought that Newton’s Method was more robust than the Bisection Method, and I initially lost five points on Q3 for something that the TA originally thought I overlooked, but then he looked at it again and decided to give me full credit for that problem. So my score went from 90 to 95, yay!

Me on 2/16: Um, so at least I got an A on the exam, but… what could I have lost 10 points on? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, hopefully.

Me on 2/12: Just took the test. Wow, that was so easy, and that’s because of the fact that we could use our cheat sheets. For most of the questions, I literally copied from my cheat sheet, which itself was copied from the class slides. There was only one thing that I had to guess on, which I also got right. There was one part of one question where I may have copied the wrong thing, but it’s probably not worth that much.

Me on 2/11: After doing some grading of CS 3510 HW 3 and solving Q1 of CS 6515 HW 3, it is time for me to start making my cheat sheets.

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.

Homework 4 (due 2/22)

Score: 10/10.

Me on 2/24: Nice!

Me on 2/23: Submitted last night. This one wasn’t too bad, but I feel less confident in my part 1 answers than usual. We’ll see how it goes once it’s graded.

Homework 5 (due 3/8)

In progress.

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)

Score: 97/100.

Me on 2/18: Another 97, but this time, I was at the upper quartile. It looks like the high score was a 99. I’ll see very soon what I lost points on, but I’m satisfied with this score, given how rushed I was to get it done. Update: Lost 3 points on Q7 since I could have been more explicit and 4 points on Q8 since I messed up a fair amount. So, I should’ve gotten a 93, but I’m not protesting that, of course.

Me on 2/11: (1:28 AM): Ok wth Q8 was actually harder than I expected. Even after all that computation, there were some things that I had to BS, and even then, I don’t know if they’ll like the fact that I only plugged in values and didn’t justify the regions are actually correct. Also, I still have to do Q3, but I’ll probably sleep first. Update: Ok you know what I submitted Q3 I don’t even care anymore.

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. Update (9:33 PM): I solved Q1, Q2, Q4, and Q5, skipping Q3 since I’m a bit stuck on it. Update (9:51 PM): Finished Q6. Update (10:27? PM or 10:31 PM): Finished Q7 I think? Not sure how specific they want this one.

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)

Score: TBA.

Me on 2/25: This thankfully wasn’t too bad overall. I was a tiny bit pressed on time, and I can’t guarantee that all of my proofs were correct, but my studying ended up paying off. There was one part of one question that I was completely unsure about and a few educated guesses for intuition, but it should be fairly ok. I’m predicting a score from low 80s to mid 90s?

Me on 2/24: I’m so scared for this exam.

Me on 2/23: Yeah… I just looked at the textbook again, and I’m gonna have to do a lot of studying and reading…

Homework 3 (due 3/4)

In progress.

Me on 2/24: In preparation for Midterm 1, I decided to look at these problems. I’m still kinda confused on the material…

Midterm 2 (on 4/8)

TBA.

Final Exam (on 5/6)

TBA.

MATH 6455: Differential Geometry I

MW 11:00-12:15

Quiz 1 (due 2/18)

Me on 2/24: So yesterday, I got feedback for Quiz 1, and he just wrote “Excellent!” along with a minor comment.

Me on 2/18: I decided to attend class again since Canvas said that we had to turn in Quiz 1 in person. During class, we presented solutions to the problems, and it was pretty interactive. I was just chilling in the back since I don’t really understand the material, unlike a certain YQ.

Me on 2/16: I think I finished Quiz 1. I’m not really sure how it’ll be graded, but we’ll see. By far the hardest part was understanding the notation and writing up solutions that adhere to that notation. Otherwise, the problems were pretty routine.

Me on 2/11: So I checked Canvas, and supposedly there’s a take-home quiz due on 2/18, so I guess we actually have assignments in this class. No big deal, though.

Quiz 2 (due never I guess)

Me on 2/18: So we were on some topic during lecture, and out of nowhere, he said, “…and that’ll be on Quiz 2!” Then he whipped out Quiz 2 and handed it out to everyone.

Quiz 3 (due never I guess)

Me on 2/24: This was handed out yesterday (on 2/23).

Quiz 4 (due never I guess)

Me on 2/28: This was handed out on 2/25.

Etcetera

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.

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.”

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: 20/20.

Me on 2/14: Yayyy!!!

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)

Score: 38/40.

Me on 2/24: I lost two points on Q3 due to some minor notational issues, but otherwise, I did really well! The median was a 27/40, and the upper quartile was a 33/40, so I was way ahead of the curve, though someone did get a 40/40.

Me on 2/18: Just finished, and… it wasn’t that bad? Most of the problems were similar (or even pretty much the same) as certain homework problems, and the challenge was mainly figuring out the small differences, which I was luckily able to work out. I finished pretty early (17 minutes left or so), but I stayed until the end to check my answers, which also helped. Overall, I think I got pretty lucky with the set of problems, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be as fortunate with the other exams. And I have an exam in CS 6515 tomorrow.

Me on 2/17: Ok, so I think I’ve gotten to the point where I could reasonably solve any HW 1 problem in a few minutes. For HW 2, I could probably handle any of them being on the exam except for Q3 and Q5. However, if any problems are as hard as some of the textbook exercises, then I’m cooked.

Me on 2/16: Time to start studying. Although I feel like I actually know how to solve these problems (provided that they’re not too clever), I’m still worried because the cutoff for an A is an 80, which means that the exams will probably be brutal.

Homework 3 (due 3/6)

In progress.

Midterm 2 (on 4/8)

TBA.

Final Exam (on 5/1)

TBA.