Machine Learning algorithms allow computers to be taught to perform tasks without being explicitly programmed.  This course is an introduction to machine learning and data mining.  The course will explore supervised, unsupervised, ensemble and reinforcement learning.  Topics may include: decision tree learning, rule learning, neural networks, support vector machines, Bayesian learning, clustering, hidden Markov model learning, deep learning.   The material of this course has some overlap with that of Computer Science 241, but it is permissible to take both.

A continuation of COSC 111. This course will emphasize more complicated problems and their algorithmic solutions. The object-oriented programming paradigm will be discussed in detail, including data abstraction, inheritance, and polymorphism. Other topics will include stacks, queues, linked lists, programming for graphical user  interfaces, and basic topics in probability.  A laboratory section will meet once a week to give students practice with programming constructs.

The destructive capabilities of war weapons expanded exponentially in the twentieth century, from the advent of aerial bombing and gas attacks through the threat of nuclear annihilation. As the targeting of civilians became accepted military practice and the lines between battlefield and home front blurred, the question of how ordinary people could prepare for the unimaginable became the focus of heated public debate.

This seminar will explore the meanings of social mobility experienced by low-income Latinx youth in elite academic institutions. Specifically, it will focus on the ways in which family, gender, and legal status shape their experiences and aspirations. Sociological theories of immigrant incorporation suggest that social mobility is determined in large part by immigrants’ context of reception, the strength of their co-ethnic communities, and group levels of human capital.

The history of Jews at elite colleges and universities appears in a number of recent studies.  This Mellon research seminar focuses on Jews at Amherst College.  Its subject poses the unique challenge of trying to research the identity and experience of individuals whose Jewishness may not have been known or visible.  That Jews can be identified in multiple ways—including religion, sense of peoplehood, shared history, and/or language—raises an important question:  what methodologies are best suited for researching Jewish life at Amherst?  To generate anal

This course is focused on developing research skills within a multidisciplinary and international context. We will begin with the question debated by neurologists and others: What constitutes a sense?

The United States, almost alone among constitutional democracies, retains death as a criminal punishment.  It does so in the face of growing international pressure for abolition and of evidence that the system for deciding who lives and who dies is fraught with error.  This seminar is designed to expose students to America's death penalty as a researchable subject.  It will be organized to help students understand how research is framed in this area, analyze theories and approaches of death penalty researchers, and identify open questions and most promising lines of futu

Fall and spring semester. Members of the Department.