# ESP Biography

## JERRY WU, MIT freshman probably studying math

Major: 18

College/Employer: MIT

## Brief Biographical Sketch:

I've been raised on contest math since 6t grade, and I expanded to physics and computer science in 11th grade. I have also dabbled in education since 10th grade.

## Past Classes

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

W12014: Physical Puzzles! in Splash 2017 (Nov. 18 - 19, 2017)
Do you love those puzzles where you have two interlocked pieces and you need to figure out how to separate them, or the ones where you need to put together a collection of blocks? Whether it's twisting and sliding or pushing and pulling, come here to solve puzzles with us!

C11094: Your Computer is Smarter Than You in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)
How can a computer assign a caption to a picture (e.g. http://tinyurl.com/jzus4h7)? How could a computer tell you what disease someone has based on the symptoms (like WebMD)? We'll give you a broad overview of lots of machine learning algorithms popular today.

C10420: Our New (and Old) Robot Overlords in Spark 2016 (Mar. 12 - 13, 2016)
How does Google's computer beat the European Go champion? How do you get a program to write your class description? Why should we support vector machines? Come learn about classic and modern artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms! No programming experience required.

C10275: Automated Spreadsheets: Theory and Practice in HSSP Spring 2016 (Feb. 20, 2016)
It's well-known that spreadsheets are great for organizing lists of data, but they're also great for using formulas to process it and using conditional formatting to automatically color-code. We'll go over some commonly used formulas and recreate some cool spreadsheets I've made or used over the years, including an implementation of a variant of Stratego.

X10161: Cognitive Biases in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
Human brains: they're pretty overpowered, but turns out being intelligent is kind of hard. This means that your brain takes shortcuts and doesn't always get things right. Come learn about how.

X10162: The Methods of Rationality in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
Is life hard? Do you have problems getting things done, or do you wish you could do more? Want to learn some cool facts about how the brain works which can be applied to making yourself more awesome? Come learn about rationality! *Any similarities in title to any real or imagined fanfictions by Eliezer Yudkowsky are purely coincidental.

M10163: Mathematical Mishmash in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
I'm going to talk about math. What math? You decide! Sort of, anyway-- I'll prepare some things I can talk about, and people in the class will decide what they're interested in. Topics will generally be in undergraduate-level math, though I can also talk about other things if people really want..

X10164: Paradoxes in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
Let's spend an hour talking about how the world doesn't make sense if you don't look at it carefully enough, and also how it doesn't make sense even if you do.

W10214: Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)
We'll make you some really cool ice cream.

M9386: Don't Mess With Infinity in Spark 2015 (Mar. 14 - 15, 2015)
Hilbert's Grand Hotel has an infinite number of rooms, with one room for each positive integer, but one day, the Hotel is full. Then, one person shows up. Can the Hotel staff find a room for him? What about two people? An infinite bus full of people? An infinite fleet of infinite buses? We'll examine this problem, and if we have time, we'll also look at a few other strange phenomena involving infinity.

M8581: Computational Cubing in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
Have you ever wanted to learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube but didn't want to memorize algorithms from the Internet? Did you know that you can figure out exactly what a certain type of algorithm will do before you do it? In this class, I will teach you two sets of techniques, one of which will allow you to solve most of the cube relatively quickly, and the other of which will allow you to solve the rest of the cube, and neither of which requires looking anything up online. Both of these methods extend to larger cubes. If you have your own Cube, you should bring it.

W8954: Misconceptions in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
We will be reading from Wikipedia's List of Common Misconceptions, even though it isn't the first Tuesday in February. Because why not.

M9059: I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Ordinals! in Splash 2014 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2014)
What's the highest you can count? Is there any way to make $$\infty^\infty$$ make any sense at all? Could Hercules ever actually kill the hydra? It turns out that all of these questions can be answered using ordinal numbers. In this class, we'll define these numbers and look at some of the things we can do with them.