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.

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!)