Splash Biography

ALAN CHANG, Mathematician

Major: Math

College/Employer: Princeton

Year of Graduation: 2014

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I led the organzation team of the first Princeton Splash in 2013. I graduated from Princeton in 2014, and now I am back as an Instructor (i.e., postdoctoral researcher) in the mathematics department. For more about me, see my website: https://sites.google.com/view/alanchang

Past Classes

(Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M722: Super Mario is (Computationally) Hard in Splash 2023 (Apr. 22, 2023)

We'll introduce the P vs NP problem from theoretical computer science. To help us understand the idea of complexity classes, we will discuss Super Mario Bros and the paper "Classic Nintendo Games are (Computationally) Hard."

X297: Rubik's cube for beginners in Splash Spring 15 (Apr. 25, 2015)

If you have no idea how to solve the Rubik's cube, this class will teach you! (I'll have cubes you can borrow during the class.) Also, we'll talk about Rubik's cube competitions -- what they're like, how fast people are, etc.

M178: What is computational linguistics? in Splash Spring 14 (Apr. 26, 2014)

Here's an amusing use of linguistics: http://what-would-i-say.com/ It's a website written by Princeton students that generates random text based on your Facebok data. (I get things like "I must have looked silly walking off the plane in my life was the binder section!" and "For the kangaroos come over I'll let you should learn linear algebra To finish by November 1. Ahhhh!!!") In this class, we'll take a look at what computational linguistics is useful for. (Google Translate and Siri come to mind.) We'll also discuss why it is so hard for computers to process natural human language.