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Class 13 Notes

Lecture Slides, Suitable For Printing

GEB Study Guide

Your reading assignment for Spring Break (and the week after) is to finish reading the first part of Gödel, Escher, Bach (up through and including Chapter IX). The questions below might help you think about the reading. Then again, they might not. I am quite certain, however, that they will not help you prepare for the quiz that will not be given on March 18.

Answer all the answerable questions, but unask the unanswerable ones. This quiz will not be graded, but it won't be ungraded either.

1. If you knew the answer to this question, what would it be?

2. Does this question have no answer?

3. Is the next question trickier than this one?

4. Was the previous question fairer than this one?


5. If this exam were graded, would your answer to the previous question be different?

6. If this exam were graded, would your answer to the previous question be different?

6. If this exam were graded, would your answer to the previous question be different?

7. If you were Gödel, how would you answer this?

8. Richard Feynman once said "If you think you know how quantum mechanics works, you're wrong." If Feynman were a logician instead, would he have said "If you think you don't understand Gödel's Theorem, then you do." or "If you don't think you don't understand Gödel's Theorem, then you don't."?

9. If your final grade in CS150 depended only on your answer to this question, would your answer to this question be different?

10. Ask and answer the question should I have asked instead of this one.

11. Ask and answer the question should I have asked instead of the previous one.



Notes

Places, Frames and Envrionments
   (define nextx






Draw an environment that has multiple places named x:







Compound Application Rule
  1. Construct a new environment whose parent is the environment the procedure's environment points to
  2. Make places in that frame with the names of each parameter that contain the corresponding values of the operand expressions.
  3. Evaluate the body in the new environment
How do we find the value associated with a name in an environment?




Golden Ages Links

I am the student whose 3rd grade teacher wrote, "Neil should cultivate a more serious attitude towards his school work."

I am also the student whose 6th grade home-room teacher wrote, "Less social involvement and more academic diligence is in order".

I also happen to be the student who, when he first took the SATs, got 500 in the verbal section. Allow me to remind you that a score of 500 is exceptionally average. Remarkably ordinary. Undoubtedly unremarkable. Well, five books and two magazine columns later, I received a letter in the mail from the Educational Testing Service, the creators and purveyors of the SAT. The letter asked my permission to reprint a passage from one of my books for use in their verbal exam. They were impressed with my writing style and compositional form, and wanted to use the passage for the reading comprehension section of their next exam. I did not know whether to be flattered or angry, whether to kiss the letter or to burn it, or whether any single exam should have any real meaning to anyone's life at all.

Neil deGrasse Tyson's Speech at the State Department to winners of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching

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