WEEK 1: Introduction (1 lecture)

Welcome to DS 593! For each week in the course I will give an overview of what we will be discussing in lectures, discussions, and what our expectations are for your work outside of class.

This week's checklist (due Sunday 1/25)

  • (Note that there is NO discussion on Tue, Jan 20!)
  • Complete entry survey (before the first lecture if possible!)
  • Attend Lecture 1 on Wed, Jan 21 and turn-in the syllabus activity on paper
  • Create a GitHub account and a GitHub Classroom repo
  • Complete Reflection 1, pushed to GitHub
  • Complete Lab 0, pushed to GitHub

This week's learning objectives

After Lecture 1 students will be able to...

  • Explain the overall course objectives, deliverables, and key policies
  • Use the course syllabus, website, and other resources to address most questions that might arise during the course
  • Set up a GitHub account and create repos from GitHub Classroom for use during the course
  • Select and use a python enviornment for local development (enough for the first two weeks of the course)
  • Sign up for Google Colab and test using cloud compute
  • Begin using AI tools to aid in set-up troubleshooting

Week 1 Reflection Prompts

  • What do you hope to learn?
  • If you had unlimited time and resources, what project would you dream of working on for this course?
  • What has been one highlight and one lowlight of your language model interactions prior to this course?

Lab 0: GitHub and Google Colab

  • Connect your GitHub account to GitHub Classroom and start your private repo
  • Add your week 1 reflections to your repo
  • Create a python notebook for your repo with some working code (hello world!)
  • Set up a Google Colab account / begin to apply for student credits (this isn't graded, but it would be helpful to start now)
  • Add three commits and a PR to your repo