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I had an algorithms class (6.006 or 046?) with Silvio Micali, who I learned partway through the semester was one of the first authors about these things. Anyway, he was a great professor. When talking through algorithms, he'd always start with say, an n^4 solution. Then cut it down to n^3, call on people to help out, etc. I remember it being something like this (in an Italian accent that we really enjoyed) "And now we're at n^2! Pretty good you might think eh? After all, we were at n^4 just a few minutes ago, this is much better? But, the human mind is a wonderful thing! It is so creative and some people thought about it, and they got n log n! Amazing. I know you are thinking, n log n is always as good as it gets in this class. Well I don't want to go into the details because, it is horrifying! But actually some people, they did even better! And you know as I said, the human mind is amazing! So maybe one day, you will do even better." Also I sat across the aisle from him when Eliezer Yudkowsky came for a talk and only realized it when he answered a question EY asked the audience. This kind of turned into me reminiscing but my point is, the guy who put these out there and did a lot of work on them is a great undergrad professor and that makes me happy. |
I honestly can't remember much about the class except that it was really difficult and I haven't really used anything I learned from that class in my day to day. Hopefully there's something stored in my brain somewhere if I ever need to recall his lectures in the future.