Icosian Reflections

…a tendency to systematize and a keen sense

that we live in a broken world.

IN  WHICH Ross Rheingans-Yoo—a sometime quantitative trader, economist, expat, EA, artist, educator, and game developer—writes on topics of int­erest.

Personal opinions on my Harvard courses

A prospective Harvard student wrote the other day asking for advice about CS+Math at Harvard, and (among other questions) asked if I'd share the courses I took to help them compare with their own plans. As always, I was happy to help. I figured it might also be useful to someone else to have an (admittedly idiosyncratic) sample of a Harvard CS+Math schedule on the Internet, so I'm posting it here, too.

note: There really isn't much more here than it says on the tin, so if you're not interested in that, you really can skip this post.


It should be obvious, but no one should take this as a prescription -- not everything was the right choice for me in hindsight, so it's definitely not exactly right for you. At best, it's a data point for people exactly like me, and at worst you should consider reversing the major takeaways.

I also feel compelled to pass along the best advice I received about picking a major, which came from Harry Lewis:

  • Pick the 32 courses you most want to take.
  • See if any major will give you a degree for exactly those.
  • If so, then you're done.
  • If not, find the one that will give you a degree with the fewest changes. Pick that one.

Don't take extra courses to get extra pieces of paper. As Harry would say, "Don't let getting your degree get in the way of getting your education!"

But, without any further caveats, here we go...


First, I'll list just the course numbers. Below that, I've listed the course titles, professors, and some light thoughts on the professors and/or the

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Chelsea Manning / HKS IOP / "Visiting Fellowship"

Here are some Harvard Crimson headlines from this week:

So here we go...


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One of the more annoying things about this affair has been the way the discussion has chased a dramatized, misleading version of the facts. To borrow a phrase, the commentators (in my social bubble) seem content with -- if not actively interested in -- framing the matter to produce heat, instead of light.

The easiest antidote for this is actually to read Dean Elmendorf's statement announcing and explaining the withdrawal of the IOP's Visiting Fellow appointment. I say this not because I agree with the decision or Elmendorf's justification, but because it at least explains what the decision was:

Some visitors to the Kennedy School are invited for just a few hours to give a talk in the School’s Forum or in one of our lecture halls or seminar rooms; other visitors stay for a full day, a few days, a semester, or longer. Among the visitors who stay more than a few hours, some are designated as “Visiting Fellows,” “Resident Fellows,” “Nonresident Fellows,” and the like. At any point in time, the Kennedy School has hundreds of Fellows playing many different roles at the School. In general across the School, we do not view the title of “Fellow” as conveying a special honor; rather, it is a way to describe some people who spend more than a few hours at the School.

We invited Chelsea Manning to spend a day at the Kennedy School. Specifically, we invited

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Mass Ave, Mt Auburn, and a Tale of Two Schools

Still, this report shows that Harvard could learn a lot from MIT about how to run a university.

Harry Lewis, "The Report Harvard Should Have Asked For", 2013


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Around the time I came to Harvard, both Mass Ave schools were dealing with the fallout of embarrassing, messy institutional mistakes. Both started with relatively small incidents, compounded by administrative decisions that were incredibly contentious during and after the fact.

Harvard's began with the Gov 1310 cheating scandal -- and it escalated when scandal erupted over the administration's search of faculty emails to find which sub-dean had spoken to the press, raising both privacy concerns and unease about the relationship between the faculty and the administration.

MIT's began with the arrest of Aaron Swartz for downloading academic articles from JSTOR -- and escalated over the Institute's complicity with the US Attorney's Office, which many members of the community felt betrayed the school's values.

That fall and spring, I was a freshman overburdened with courses that I could just barely keep up with. I was just barely finding my way around Harvard (and had not yet begun this blog!). But I wanted to understand the community I had joined, so I read commentary on what seemed to be the pressing issues, by people that I had come to respect. Some drew parallels between the questions of identity that faced each school. And I began to piece together a theory -- or at least an understanding -- about the soul of the modern university, at least as it was understood along Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Mass.

Now, I'm a degree-holder on the University's donor rolls, flung some two-hundred miles from Cambridge.

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Thoughts on "Be Reasonable" as a collaboration policy

A course I used to teach -- cs50 -- has seen some on-campus news (and editorial) coverage recently in the wake of a leak that 60 students in the course were reported to the Administrative Board on suspicions of academic dishonesty. I don't have any relationship with the course since 2016 and I don't have any particularly relevant inside information as a former Teaching Fellow. As a relatively junior member of the course staff, I wasn't asked to work on any cases of academic dishonesty; the revelations that I could give have already been shared with the press.

But there's one thing that's come up in the ensuing commentary that I would like to put a finer point on.


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The Crimson's Editorial Board has called for the course to lay out a more explicit collaboration policy:

The course has an open-ended and amorphous honor policy, under the banner of being "reasonable." We understand that the collaborative nature of computer science requires students to work together, and may thus make promulgating strict rules about plagiarism more difficult...

Though the course staff have undoubtedly given this matter some thought, we urge them to more explicitly delineate what is allowed and what is unacceptable. That many of the accused students allege that they were unaware of having done anything wrong may suggest

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On “’till the stock of the Puritans die”

attention-conservation notice: Taking poetry seriously. Wholehearted, uncynical, unapologetic Harvardiana.

Today's the first time that many of Harvard's graduands will hear the little-known final verse of "Fair Harvard". So it seems as good a time as any to muse on the administration's decision to change that verse's final lyric.

It would be pretty natural to be outraged at the prospect, but after trying to start that blog post and failing for a while, I realized that I'm actually in favor of the change.


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"Fair Harvard", as far as almae matres go, is actually quite good. Here are a few others for comparison:

Notre Dame, our Mother
tender, strong, and true,
proudly in the heavens,
gleams thy gold and blue.
Glory’s mantle cloaks thee;
golden is thy fame
and our hearts forever
praise thee Notre Dame.
MSU, we love thy shadows
When twilight silence falls,
glushing deep and softly paling
o’er ivy covered halls;
beneath the pines we'll gather
to give our faith so true,
sing our love for Alma Mater
and thy praises, MSU.

When from these scenes we wander
and twilight shadows fade,
our mem’ry still will linger
where light and shadows played;
in the evening oft we’ll gather
and pledge our faith anew,
sing our love for Alma Mater
and thy praise, MSU.

Where the rolling foothills rise
up t’wards mountains higher,
where at eve the Coast Range lies,
in the sunset fire,
flushing deep and paling;
here we raise our voices hailing
thee, our Alma Mater.

Tender vistas ever new
thru’the arches meet the eyes,
where the red roofs rim the blue
of the sun-steeped skies,

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Happy Housing Day!

(In which the author, through timely blogging, attempts to rekindle a fading feeling of connection to his alma mater.)


On a Thursday morning four years ago, upperclassmen pounded on the door of my friends' suite where I had slept over (again), and when we let them in, they popped a (well-shaken) bottle of champagne to welcome us to Eliot House. Over the next three years, I'd spend some of the best afternoons (and the most miserable all-nighters) in Eliot, and though I'd be stretching the truth to say that I became close with everyone in the house, I had a place that was home to come bck to, year after year. Of course, I had the best friends I could possibly have asked for, but for that I owe more thanks to the Freshman Dean's Office for throwing us all into Canaday than the housing lottery for giving us the best of all houses.


(My dad puts his arm around my shoulders and gestures at the courtyard, where the commencement canopies have already been taken away. He repeats words that his father spoke to him thirty years before, a few blocks from here. "This is Eliot House, that has been your home. Look, and fix it in your memory. Remember the time you've spent here.")


Because yes, with a lucky roll of the metaphorical (but quite literally random) dice, we landed in the house that was near (if not at) the top of almost every freshman's list. The house with the largest endowment (grandfathered from the days when houses still had endowments!). The house with the best formals (in both quality and quantity!). A plurality of three

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Thou then wert our parent, the nurse of our soul... (A thank-you post)


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To my parents, in whose footsteps I couldn't be prouder to follow.

To my grandmother and late grandfather, who have been working for this moment for the past fifty years.

To my grandmother, who sewed my dance costumes.

To Lucian, the first friend I met here, without whom I would not have found the path I did. I'm so glad we're doing this next thing together.

To Christina, without whom I would not have survived with sense of humor intact. Thank you, friend.

To Ava, who was always there to lend an ear and set my heart true. You're still a klutz and a derp.

To Julia, who could be counted on to be in the audience whenever her blockmates were sweating under the lights. I can't say in words how much I appreciated it.

To Miriam, the stalwart rock of our blocking group.

To Grace, who lit up the room. Smartypants.

To Claire, who had the kindest words. I'm glad I got to know you in the end.

To Joy, who kept being there when I turned around.

To Michael, for wonderful conversations.

To Ben, who set me on the path to make the world better.

To Keno, who weathered the absolute worst with me.

To Rob, who I have liked more the more I've gotten to know him, and who has more than repaid any debt between us with fast friendship.

To Olivia, who put up with my shit for so long, as we struggled and grew together as dancers and leaders. Harvard Ballroom is going great places under you.

To Cyndia, who is the best single thing that happened to me

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