Courses

Pushing back against this trope of homelessness, this course illuminates the robust, vibrant, and multifacetted
qualities of a home in the Diaspora, lasting for over a millennium, that both Ashkenazi and Sephardi
Jews managed to create for themselves in lands, predominantly populated by Slavs. They did so despite the
many constraints of legal and religious discrimination, threats of physical violence, displacement, and countless
forms of exclusion from dominant society. Moving across centuries, countries, and languages, we will revisit the
contributions of the Jews to their so called “host cultures” by way of diverse media—literary and non-fictional
works, memoirs, artistic works, songs, feature and documentary films, journalistic pieces, and more. By the end
of this journey, we will have gained a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Jews and Slavs have been
intimately imbricated and intertwined since times immemorial.

All course materials are available in English. No reading knowledge of Russian or other Slavic languages
is required. Course participants with the reading knowledge of any region-specific language are encouraged to
consult the respective originals, provided by the instructor upon request. This course will be of interest to those
majoring in Slavic and/or Jewish Studies, as well as anyone interested in Comparative Literature, History, Art
History, and Film and Visual Studies.

A general introduction to computer science for science and engineering students interested in majoring in computer science or engineering. Covers fundamental concepts of computer science, algorithmic problem-solving capabilities, and introductory Java programming skills. Assumes no prior programming background. Columbia University students may receive credit for only one of the following two courses: 1004 or 1005.

Logic and formal proofs, sequences and summation, mathematical induction, binomial coefficients, elements of finite probability, recurrence relations, equivalence relations and partial orderings, and topics in graph theory (including isomorphism, traversability, planarity, and colorings).

Regular languages: deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata, regular expressions. Context-free languages: context-free grammars, push-down automata. Turing machines, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the Church-Turing thesis. Introduction to Complexity Theory and NP-Completeness.

Mathematical foundations of machine learning: Linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and probability and statistics. Comprehensive review and additional treatment of
relevant topics used in the analysis and design of machine learning models. Preliminary exposure to core algorithms such as linear regression, gradient descent, principal
component analysis, low-rank approximations, and kernel methods.

Computational approaches to the analysis, understanding, and generation of natural language text at scale. Emphasis on machine learning techniques for NLP, including deep learning and large language models. Applications may include information extraction, sentiment analysis, question answering, summarization, machine translation, and conversational AI. Discussion of datasets, benchmarking and evaluation, interpretability, and ethical considerations.
Due to significant overlap in content, only one of COMS 4705 or Barnard COMS 3705BC may be taken for credit.

Principles of Ethical Artificial Intelligence across technical and societal dimensions. Combines technical AI and machine learning implementations and ethical analysis. Students will learn to build, audit, and mitigate ethical risks in AI systems using tools like fairness libraries, explainability frameworks, and privacy-preserving techniques. Emphasizes coding, algorithmic critique, and real-world cases.
Topics include: foundations of AI ethics, fairness, interpretability, explainability,  accountability, privacy, robustness, alignment, safety, and societal benefit. 
Assessments include coding projects, bias auditing assignments, and ethical analysis papers.

Basic statistical principles and algorithmic paradigms of supervised machine learning.

Prerequisites: 
Multivariable calculus (e.g. MATH1201 or MATH1205 or APMA2000), linear algebra (e.g. COMS3251 or MATH2010 or MATH2015), probability (e.g. STAT1201 or STAT4001 or IEOR3658 or MATH2015), discrete math (COMS3203), and general mathematical maturity. Programming and algorithm analysis (e.g. COMS 3134). COMS 3770 is recommended for students who wish to refresh their math background.

Prerequisites: (COMS W3134 or COMS W3136COMS W3137) and (COMS W3203) Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.

Prerequisites: STAT UN1201, ECON UN3211 Intermediate Microeconomics and ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macroeconomics. Equivalent to ECON UN3025. Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, Eurobond, Eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the capital asset pricing model and the efficient markets hypothesis.

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 or the equivalent. Introduction to the principles of money and banking. The intermediary institutions of the American economy and their historical developments, current issues in monetary and financial reform.