In this class we will use creative writing techniques targeted to help get students get their points across in college application essays. We will take a look at targeted, specific writing that only creative writing can spark.


Prerequisites
Interest in sending college applications to colleges. Or someone who wants to learn how creative writing can make you a better communicator.

This course will give a brief introduction to investing in the stock market. We will cover how to analyze stocks and specific companies. It will not be overly complicated but will require an interest in making money. I am a huge fan of Warren Buffett's, and the course will mainly be derived from his unique investing philosophy. This is not academic finance. This is the real world stuff.

Learn practical financial tips on what to do now to help pay for college,
manage your money, and capitalize on building future financial security after school. This overview is specifically designed to help students navigate the real costs of college by giving useful
knowledge on budget management, credit card debt, taxes, loans and financial aid, risks and investments.

Did you know that when your mother was your age, women in the United States were not allowed to hold credit cards, without asking their father or husband for permission?

You may have heard about Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book, Lean In, or about the controversy surrounding it. You may have heard of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, or Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. What is feminism? And more importantly, does it still have a meaning for us today, in 21st Century America? What impact will feminism have on you, your career, your life? And more importantly, how can we make a change?

Female and male students both encouraged to attend!

Classical music: "boring, old, and stuffy," right? Why do we believe this? What contributes to this? Why is it "dying"? What innovations is it undergoing? What can we learn about crisis and change?

This class will examine recent business studies and strategies (as released by Oliver Wyman and McKinsey and Co), scholarly and popular reactions, and historical examples of crisis in classical music (bankruptcy, financial crisis, etc.), Highly recommended for (i) those interested in business/creative industries, (ii) budding social scientists, and (iii) musician-leaders.

Visual media is everywhere. We spend hours weekly on the Internet, watching TV or music videos, seeing movies. But do we ever think about the messages contained in them? This class will introduce feminist concepts about women, race, femininity and masculinity by analyzing visual media and our role in it.

Have you ever taken a high school Spanish class? Are you tired of the usual curriculum? Come join us for a fun discussion that you lead yourselves! Bring your topic, leave your inhibitions, and come to our judgement-free class! As a plus, we'll teach you the differences in the Spanish of our respective countries!


Prerequisites
At least three semesters of high school Spanish.

Within the frame of our social understanding, medicine is an art form that transcends the bounds of culture. The Sumerians, the Egyptians,the Indians, the Native Americans all had different practices of medicine that reflected a certain cultural understanding and thought process. My class will focus on a very general, but structured study on Ancient Greek Medicine, from its competitive origins (in particular, its association with magic) to Galenic Medicine. Lastly, we will use this information to meditate on what is "modern medicine".

Introduction to one of the most flexible languages. Will cover syntax of Python and object oriented programming.

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.


Prerequisites
No prior experience with linguistics is necessary!

In statistical mechanics, physicists develop equations describing the macroscopic behavior of complicated systems based on the dynamics of their microscopic constituents. But what if we want to study a system in which these microscopic dynamics are too complicated to lead to nice, useful macroscopic equations? Of course, computers will come to the rescue, but how? One possible answer is a numerical analysis technique called Monte Carlo simulation, in which a large number of simple interactions are simulated and their results aggregated and/or averaged. In this course, we will briefly introduce some of the basic concepts behind Monte Carlo simulations, and then explore a simple ideal gas simulator implemented in Python.


Prerequisites
Physics and chemistry (mechanics, Newton's laws, electrostatic forces, ideal gas behavior). Calculus will be kept to a minimum. Some programming knowledge will be helpful.

If you've taken calculus, you've probably had to solve lots of optimization (maximization/minimization) problems via lots of derivatives. Come learn how to solve many of these problems without having to do any of those messy calculations! No calculus experience needed! (In fact, if you already know calculus, you might have to try very hard to resist the urge to use derivatives! But I guarantee that you'll appreciates the techniques that will be presented in the class!)


Prerequisites
Algebra, Geometry

Numbers, presentations, graphs, interpretations, and perspectives! No longer will you cringe when faced with a confusing data set. Have no fear, stats is here! This course will enable students to think critically be able to graph, organize, and analyze data. In addition, students will be given a chance to collect their own data based on what they're passionate about. This course is definitely recommended for those who are planning to take a future statistics course such as AP Statistics or statistics in college. Bear in mind that this course is not meant to be challenging or a burden but rather a safe space where students can share what they find difficult in mathematics in general and work on it, which I'm hoping will lead to eventual confidence in future math courses. Feel free to ask me any questions regarding high school or college in general!


Prerequisites
Students should have some knowledge of algebra.

There are a lot of rumors going around prime numbers: unlimited, impossible to find, used for encryption, etc. We'll try to explore their properties in a clear but accurate way.


Prerequisites
No real prereq, any high school algebra and number theory is good but not required.

Partial differential equations... well, that's a mouthful. It's feared by all, approached by few. And it's so ridiculously useful we can't ignore it forever.

But it's really not THAT bad. However, no one knows that. Come take this class and learn the basics of PDE (separation of variables, eigenvalues, etc) so that you can brag to your friends about how smart you are. And they'll have no choice but to believe you, because they'll have no idea what you're talking about!

But, seriously, PDE is a great tool for any aspiring physicist, and it's much easier than people give it credit for. Take the path less traveled and learn about this amazing field of mathematics.


Prerequisites
Some sort of calculus experience, preferably with integrals. I'll answer any and all questions people have, but it will be difficult to follow if you're unsure of what "dx" means (it's an incremental change along the x axis, if you were wondering).

An Intel Core i7 980 XE processor can run 100 billion floating point operations every second. But some data processing jobs require astronomically huge computing resources, which require tasks to be distributed over several machines. Often, this means using an algorithm called MapReduce, which deals with the fact that two pieces of data sent to two different machines may, in fact, depend on each other. In this course, we will explore some basics of distributed computing, and then talk about the MapReduce algorithm conceptually, before seeing a basic example and discussing some practical aspects of the algorithm and its open source implementation, Hadoop, and Amazon's MapReduce service, EMR.


Prerequisites
Some programming knowledge (small amounts of pseudocode will be shown, so any language should be fine).

Edge detection is a basic yet fundamental problem in image processing and computer vision. In this course, we will talk about some basic tools and concepts in image processing, then use this foundation to study the Canny Edge Detection algorithm and some of its optimizations. It is my goal for everyone in the class to be understand the Canny edge detector well enough to implement it on their own, although we will not do this during the class.

If time permits, we will also take a brief high level look at some more modern approaches to edge detection, especially those involving machine learning.


Prerequisites
If you know what a derivative is and have some programming knowledge (any language), you should understand everything in this course. Experience with MATLAB is a plus.

Chemistry and chemicals often get a bad rep as dangerous or “unnatural” (artificial). But many people underestimate the role of chemistry in natural processes, many of which play an important role in modern life. We will discuss the chemical basis of the following natural processes:
- Soap-making
- Agriculture (Fertilizers & Pesticides)
- Fermentation (Beer, Wine)
- Medications
***NEW & IMPROVED***


Prerequisites
Chemistry

Have you ever wondered about how you are able to see the world in color? This course will go over the basics of the science of color and the how color information is processed by the brain. Included will be examples of color illusions and mechanisms of color blindness.

Be prepared to leave (almost) everything you learned in your high school physics classroom behind!

In Einstein's theory of special relativity, not everything is what it seems to be. If you move at a constant speed, you shrink, and you age slower than anything else around you. Come to learn more about Lorentz transformations, time dilation, and relativity of simultaneity.


Prerequisites
Knowledge of algebra preferable Some high school physics

Interested in economics? Of course you are!

In this class, we'll explore what you might learn in college-level introductory economics classes. To do this, we'll talk about what economics is, and then think through a couple of interesting (and very important!) questions that we've talked about in my econ classes here at Columbia.

For instance, would raising the minimum wage hurt or help people? In general, do people work more or less if you pay them more? Can the government grow the economy?

If you're interested in how economists solve problems, or if you're considering studying economics at Columbia or elsewhere, this class is ideal for you! (Don't worry--we won't be doing the boring "memorize this graph" stuff from AP Macro/Micro, if you've taken either of those.)


Prerequisites
You should like cookies. And while we almost definitely won't be solving any actual math problems, these concepts will show up: - Equations of lines (y=mx+b) and the slope of a line. - Graphing in an x-y coordinate plane. - Percentages & percent change.

Climate change has become a common theme in the news in recent years and for good reason: it impacts our world in broad and potentially devastating ways. In this course, we will define climate change and explore the ways scientists determine how and why the Earth’s climate is changing. We will compare climate change due to natural causes with human-driven climate change.

The Sun is our nearest star and the only one we can see up close. The Sun also affects the Earth in diverse ways, from causing aurorae to influencing climate. In this class we will discuss some aspects of the Sun including the solar cycle, sunspots, the corona, solar flares, and space weather. Because the Sun is so important, many telescopes observe the Sun daily. We will look at some of these recent images of the Sun in order to understand what the Sun is doing today.

In this course we will discuss the following topics:

1) What is the "genetic code"?

2) How does DNA underlie inheritance?

3) How does DNA sequencing and fingerprinting work?

4) What are some genetic mutations that cause illness?


Prerequisites
None

Medicine has evolved at an exponential rate over the past century. This class explores innovative advances in science that have solved medicine's greatest mysteries and challenges. We will explore, among other things, powerful new drugs to treat infections, the medical applications of radiation, and bio-engineering to cure genetic diseases. We will also look at some of the most cutting edge research still in development, such as intravenous surgery, using stem cells to regenerate organs, organ/tissue printing, and bionic replacement using robotic limbs. Students can request their own topics using the application form!


Prerequisites
H.S. students with an interest in research, biotechnology, medicine, and/or the life sciences.

Why is chocolate fairly addictive and popular? What makes "good" chocolate? This course will explore the structure and reactivity of the main compounds in chocolate, chocolate's chemical influence on our bodies, and what the chemistry behind it all means for the future of chocolate.


Prerequisites
Basic general chemistry, usually taken by first or second year high school students is helpful to enjoy the class, but not strictly required.

Come learn how linguistics helps us understand one of the most important but taken-for-granted aspects of our lives: language. Specifically, we'll focus on trying to understand how we make sounds on a fundamental level. How can we classify and analyze all the sounds that make up English speech, or that of any other language? This isn't a matter of grammar or spelling--it's something completely different and really exciting!

This class explores the beauty of creating wonderful, useful things with your own hands. Knitting is an easy way of self expression useful for developing endurance in your fingers, giving someone a warm present, and is definitely an affordable way to keep warm during the winter. In this class we'll be focusing on the very basics of knitting. We'll only be knitting scarves.


Prerequisites
None. Yarn and knitting needles are optional though recommended.

A class to learn useful tips and guidelines about competitive Impromptu speaking, and general improvised speech. The event refers to those in which a speaker is given 1 minute to use a simple prompt (a word or a phrase) and design a 5 minute speech (times may vary slightly in practice). Class will go over various useful techniques specifically for this kind of event, but also methods of bringing ideas together quickly in your head and creating a flow of logic. The trick is to use what you know, and put it together in ways you’ve practiced. It’s not as on the spot as you think!

In American schools, we usually study the Cold War from the American perspective, with a focus on politics. But in this course, we'll look at Soviet culture through the prism of the Cold War. Topics of discussion will include the visual arts, music, architecture, propaganda, espionage, and everything in between—like how the site of a church in Moscow became a swimming pool.

This course will cover the history leading up to, during, and after the 2007/2008 Financial Crisis. The course will delve into unconventional areas that are extremely important to understanding Wall Street and its role in the Financial Crisis. Rest assured, the course will cover the more recent, polarized history (such as the falls of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers). And, finally, the course will assess our present situation--analyzing what we have done (if anything) to prevent a future financial calamity.

Did you know that Germany is about a century younger than the USA? Or that the first Oktoberfest occurred 60 years before that, and was actually a wedding celebration so successful that it became an annual Bavarian tradition?

Come explore the history of the "Krauts," from Roman times through today, and discover Germany with me from Neuschwannstein, to the German Reichs, to the modernized country that is currently the rising star of the EU.

This course will follow a wide variety of Ancient Roman individuals that shaped world history with their swords, philosophy, or mentally unhinged demeanor. The course will chronologically catalogue some of Rome's most influential (and insane) leaders. It will be a humorous and exciting journey that will display numerous studs and lunatics... and a few boring philosophers. The course will teach students: A) to be really awesome B) a bit of fun and interesting history C) how not to act when in control of the entire Mediterranean world.

Do you think England is good at football? Do you consider Maradona to be the greatest footballer of all time? If so, this is the perfect class for you!
Learn all the most important facts and legends of the world's greatest sporting event! Learn of the best artisans and tacticians to ever tread the football pitch! And of course, be prepared to watch goals, goals, and goals!


Prerequisites
Some interest in the beautiful game