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Greetings,I would say that if you are intending to gain ten minutes of focus from one minute of meditation, than you are missing the point of meditating.Meditation is to clear your mind completely of any thoughts or emotions to focus on the present.Does rushing through one minute so you can sprint the next ten sound like clearing your mind?If you want to get into meditation and see the long term effects which could include increased focus among many others, then start here:Tomorrow, when you wake up in the morning, avoid grabbing your phone or turning on the television.Walk to a quiet place in your home with no distractions, bonus points if it is outside.Sit down in relaxed but up right position.Take a deep breath. Hold it at max capacity for the count of five.Release the breath.You’ve won today. You can continue for as long as you’d like or get up and continue with your day.The next day, follow steps 1–5. Then, make sure and do five deep breaths.You’ve won today. You can continue for as long as you’d like or get up and continue with your day.The next day, follow steps 1–5. Then, do ten deep breaths.Continue this process until you get up to 100 deep breaths by adding five or ten breaths per day.After you’ve reached 100 breaths, stop counting the breaths you are taking. Stop focusing on your breathing and get up when you feel ready to continue with your day.You have now established the basic habit of meditating. You should notice the benefits shortly :)Best of luck,Trevor CarlsonHelix Academy - Online Courses by World Class InstructorsCheck out our most recent podcast episode where meditation is brought up.

Q. What are the names of the universities in US which are cheaper but really good?A. The 50 Most Affordable Colleges with the Best Return (2014)(BONUS: The 20 Public Colleges With The Smartest Students)by John FerrerRanking of colleges and universities, balance: tuition and expected income on graduating with a bachelor’s degree. Schools keep cost of tuition down but promise high income after graduation. (Ignore the military academies.)1 United States Naval Academy (Annapolis) Annapolis, MDGraduates of the highly ranked liberal arts college obtain a Bachelor’s of Science degree. Graduates receive a commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy or as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. The students called midshipmen, are officers in training. The U.S. Navy pays for their tuition in return for an active-duty service obligation after they graduate. Applicants are required to apply directly to the academy and obtain a nomination, typically from a congressional representative.Website: United States Naval AcademyTuition: freeStarting Salary: $77,100Mid-Career Salary: $131,00015-Year Return: $1,560,7502 United States Military Academy (West Point) West Point, NYThe graduates of the highly ranked liberal arts college receive a Bachelor’s of Science degree. The students, known as cadets are officers in training. The United States Army pays for their tuition in return for an active-duty obligation. Graduates of the United State Military Academy receive a commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. Applicants must apply directly to the academy and obtain a nomination, typically from a congressional representative.Website: United States Military Academy (West Point)Tuition: freeStarting Salary: $74,000Mid-Career Salary: $120,00015-Year Return: $1,455,7503 SUNY Maritime College (State University of New York) Throggs Neck, NYSUNY Maritime College, a public institution, is the largest of the six state maritime academies. The college prepares students for careers in the international maritime industry. SUNY Maritime College provides nationally ranked programs in the fields of marine environmental studies, engineering, humanities and international business.Students can combine any bachelor’s degree program with preparation for the professional license as a United States Merchant Marine Officer. Every engineering degree hase received accreditation from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).Website: SUNY Maritime CollegeTuition: $5,870Starting Salary: $59,400Mid-Career Salary: $116,00015-Year Return: $1,315,5004 United States Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs) Colorado Springs, COThe core curriculum at the United States Air Force Academy comprises the majority of the academic experience, however the students, known as cadets are required to select a specialized field of study from over 30 majors.The cadets receive military training throughout their four years at the U.S. Air Force Academy which includes courses and instruction in aviation and airmanship. Candidates are required to pass a fitness test and obtain a nomination, typically from a member of Congress in the candidate’s home district.Website: United States Air Force AcademyTuition: freeStarting Salary: $64,900Mid-Career Salary: $109,00015-Year Return: $1,304,2505 Colorado School of Mines Golden, COThe Colorado School of Mines, an engineering and applied sciences public institution, has 21 academic departments including Geophysics, Engineering and Hydrologic Sciences. The school also provides degree programs in Liberal Arts & International Studies and in other areas.The school’s admissions standards are among the highest of any public university in the United States. The Colorado School of Mines has partnerships with local government laboratories. The Colorado School of Mines is one of the world’s major institutions regarding researching and teaching about mining-related engineering.Website: Colorado School of MinesTuition: $14,400Starting Salary: $66,700Mid-Career Salary: $106,00015-Year Return: $1,295,2506 Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GAThe highly ranked Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech, is one of the nation’s largest research schools. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifies Georgia Institute of Technology as a university with very high research activity.Georgia Institute of Technology’s six schools provide a wide variety of degree programs.Georgia Tech provides a focused, technology based education. Georgia Tech has received accolades for its degree programs in engineering, computing, architecture, the sciences, business, and liberal arts.Website: Georgia Institute of TechnologyTuition: $8,258Starting Salary: $60,700Mid-Career Salary: $108,00015-Year Return: $1,265,2507 University of California – Berkeley Berkeley, CAThe faculty members of the highly ranked University of California, Berkeley, a public research university, have received numerous national and international awards. UC Berkeley includes the prominent Hass School of Business, ranked among the top 25 business schools in the world.The National Research Council ranked more than 40 of the school’s programs among the top 10 in the United States. The College of Letters and Science is the schools largest college.Website: University of California, BerkeleyTuition: $12,864Starting Salary: $54,700Mid-Career Salary: $111,00015-Year Return: $1,242,7508 Missouri University of Science and Technology Rola, MOThe Missouri University of Science and Technology, also known as Missouri S&T, is known as an engineering and science based school. Missouri S&T is renowned for its hard science programs. Its graduates have made great contributions to science. Engineering is the most popular field of study, computer science is far behind in second place. Missouri University of Science and Technology also provides programs in the fields of the arts, social science and business.Website: Missouri University of Science and TechnologyTuition: $7,946Starting Salary: $61,900Mid-Career Salary: $96,10015-Year Return: $1,185,0009 Massachusetts Maritime Academy Buzzards Bay, MAMassachusetts Maritime Academy, a coeducational public institution, provides baccalaureate and master’s of science degrees. The undergraduate academic programs feature several distinct majors and emphasize a blend of technical and professional studies with liberal arts.Graduates of the school’s two oldest programs, Marine Transportation and Marine Engineering obtain two-fold credentials: A Bachelor of Science degree and a professional license as Third Mate or Third Assistant Engineer. The USTS Enterprise is a maritime academy training ship.Website: Massachusetts Maritime AcademyTuition: $1,465Starting Salary: $54,700Mid-Career Salary: $102,00015-Year Return: $1,175,25010 South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Rapid City, SDSouth Dakota School of Mines and Technology, a public institution, provides graduate and undergraduate degree programs in engineering and science fields. Graduates of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology design, construct and operate technology. The school performs research in a number of important areas of science and engineering. South Dakota School of Mines and Technology named a Fulbright Top Producing Institution.Website: South Dakota School of Mines and TechnologyTuition: $8,240Starting Salary: $62,400Mid-Career Salary: $91,80015-Year Return: $1,156,50011 Michigan Technological University Houghton, MIMichigan Technological University provides more than 120 undergraduate areas of study and numerous master’s degrees. The university offers degrees in engineering; business; technology; natural, physical and environmental sciences; social sciences and more.The university performs research in a wide array of areas. The students perform research, often one-on-one with a professor, as part of the academic curriculum. Students participating in the Enterprise Program work with industry sponsors on projects such as wireless communications, environmental sustainability, improved snowboards and more.Website: Michigan Technological UniversityTuition: $13,470Starting Salary: $59,200Mid-Career Salary: $94,70015-Year Return: $1,154,25012 California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo) San Luis Obispo, CAUndergraduates at California Polytechnic State University, also known as Cal Poly, have a variety of majors to choose from. The highly ranked engineering programs are the most popular programs. The school has more than 80 state-of the art laboratories dedicated to the Cal Poly College of Engineering.Students choose a major when they apply for admission. Students take classes in their major beginning in their first year. The courses emphasize active learning methods; they have a high proportion of lab work and field work.Website: California Polytechnic State University - San Luis ObispoTuition: $8,523Starting Salary: $54,000Mid-Career Salary: $99,10015-Year Return: $1,148,25013 New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, NJNew Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), a public research university provides a blend of liberal and technical education. NJIT provides graduate and undergraduate programs in the fields of business, architecture, medical, engineering, science, legal, technological and more. The school provides opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. NJIT is home to the Enterprise Development Center, one of the nation’s largest high-technology business incubators.Website: New Jersey Institute of TechnologyTuition: $12,800Starting Salary: $53,900Mid-Career Salary: $98,00015-Year Return: $1,139,25014 University of California – San Diego La Jolla, CAUniversity of California, San Diego, a public research university, provides a variety of graduate and undergraduate degree programs. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has designated UC San Diego as a university with very high research activity. UC San Diego operates four research institutes.The university includes the highly ranked Jacobs School of Engineering and School of Medicine. The faculty includes Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, Tony Award and Academy Award winners.Website: University of California San DiegoTuition: $12,192Starting Salary: $49,300Mid-Career Salary: $101,00015-Year Return: $1,127,25015 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology Socorro, NMNew Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, a public research institution, specializes in science, engineering and related fields. Students have opportunities for one-on-one mentoring relationships with professors and opportunities for on-campus employment in one of the numerous research facilities or with research faculty members.New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is a world leader in numerous research areas such as astrophysics, hydrology, geophysics, atmospheric physics, geological sciences, information technology and more.Website: New Mexico Institute of Mining and TechnologyTuition: $5,714Starting Salary: $50,500Mid-Career Salary: $99,50015-Year Return: $1,125,00016 Montana Tech Butte, MTMontana Tech of the University of Montana, a public institution, has a heavy focus on technical and scientific education. The school provides 40 academic programs. Students learn from professors (most of them have current industry experience) not from teaching assistants. The classes have an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration. Montana Tech has four main units: College of Technology; College of Letters, Sciences and Professional Studies; School of Mines and Engineering; and the Graduate School.Website: Montana TechTuition: $6,464Starting Salary: $63,100Mid-Career Salary: $83,70015-Year Return: $1,101,00017 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VAThe highly ranked University of Virginia, a public research university, offers a wide array of degree programs. The university’s graduate programs include the highly ranked School of Law and Medicine, Curry School of Education, School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Darden School of Business Administration.Faculty members have received the Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Award, the Humboldt Awards, the National Book Award and Fulbright Fellowships. UNESCO has designated the University of Virginia campus a World Heritage Site.Website: The University of VirginiaTuition: $10,016Starting Salary: $51,000Mid-Career Salary: $95,70015-Year Return: $1,100,25018 Texas A&M University College Station, TXTexas A&M University, a public research institution, provides a wide array of undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The school’s Cadet Corps is the nation’s largest ROTC program. Texas A&M University has highly ranked graduate offerings via its Mays Business School, Dwight Look College of Engineering and the College of Education and Human Development. Texas A&M University a prominent research university is among the nation’s top 25 for total research expenditures.Website: Texas A&M UniversityTuition: $9,006Starting Salary: $51,900Mid-Career Salary: $94,30015-Year Return: $1,096,50019 University of California – Irvine Irvine, CAUniversity of California, Irvine, a public research institution, offers a wide variety of graduate and undergraduate degree programs. The university has highly regarded graduate programs with specialty offerings at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and the Paul Merage School of Business.Achievements in the sciences, arts, humanities, management and medicine have collected top national rankings in over 40 academic programs. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher education has designated UC Irvine as having very high research activity.Website: University of California – IrvineTuition: $11,220Starting Salary: $48,900Mid-Career Salary: $97,20015-Year Return: $1,095,75020 University of California – Davis Davis, CAUniversity of California, Davis, a public research university, provides a wide variety of academic options through its graduate, undergraduate and professional schools and colleges. The University of California, Davis includes the highly ranked School of Law, Graduate School of Management, College of Engineering, School of Medicine and the School of Veterinary Medicine. The university offers a large number of undergraduate majors and graduate programs. UC Davis has an impressive research budget.Website: University of California – DavisTuition: $13,902Starting Salary: $49,000Mid-Career Salary: $97,00015-Year Return: $1,095,00021 Virginia Technological University Blacksburg, VAVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, also known as Virginia Tech, is a public institution providing a large number of degree programs through eight colleges, with strengths in technology, science, engineering as well as professional programs. The Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets keeps the military tradition, but comprises only a small fraction of the student population.Virginia Tech is a prominent research school. All students, including undergraduates, have opportunities to benefit from research experiences. Virginia Tech includes the highly ranked College of Engineering.Website: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityTuition: $9,617Starting Salary: $51,700Mid-Career Salary: $94,20015-Year Return: $1,094,25022 University of California – Los Angeles Los Angeles, CAThe highly ranked University of California, Los Angeles, also known as UCLA, is a public university. UCLA includes high ranked schools such as the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies; Anderson School of Management; School of Law; Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Public Affairs; David Geffen School of Medicine, School of Public Health and the School of Nursing. The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is one of the nation’s top ranked hospitals.Website: University of California – Los AngelesTuition: $12,862Starting Salary: $49,600Mid-Career Salary: $95,30015-Year Return: $1,086,75023 Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls, OROregon Institute of Technology, also known as Oregon Tech, is a technical and professional public institution with a mission to provide technology education throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest region. Oregon Institute of Technology, traditionally known for its engineering and technology programs, also has programs in business, environmental science, management and health professions. Oregon Tech emphasizes sustainability in academic and campus life. The school also emphasizes lab-based instruction. The students can also learn through externships.Website: Oregon Institute of TechnologyTuition: $8,890Starting Salary: $57,000Mid-Career Salary: $86,60015-Year Return: $1,077,00024 Purdue University (Indiana) West Lafayette, INPurdue University, a public university, has a large number of undergraduate and graduate programs as well as renowned research initiatives. The university also has professional degrees in pharmacy and veterinary medicine.Purdue University includes the prominent Krannert School of Management, College of Education, College of Engineering and the College of Pharmacy. More than 20 of nation’s astronauts have Purdue degrees. Purdue University has the fourth largest international student population of all the universities in the United States.Website: Purdue UniversityTuition: $9,992Starting Salary: $54,200Mid-Career Salary: $89,10015-Year Return: $1,074,75025 Stony Brook University (State University of New York) Stony Brook, NYStony Brook University, a public institution and part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, offers a large number of majors, minors as well as combined-degree programs for undergraduates. The school also has numerous graduate degree programs.Freshmen belong to one of six undergraduate colleges organized based on students’ interests. Undergraduates have research opportunities. The university includes the highly ranked Stony Brook University Medical Center. Stony Brook University is a member of the elite Association of American Universities.Website: Stony Brook UniversityTuition: $5,870Starting Salary: $48,600Mid-Career Salary: $94,30015-Year Return: $1,071,75026 University of California – Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CAUniversity of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), a public research institution, has five schools and colleges. UCSB includes the Gervirtz Graduate School of Education, College of Engineering and the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.Undergraduates at the University of California, Santa Barbara can apply for admissions to the College of Creative Studies, which emphasizes focused studies in one of eight areas: Chemistry, biology, biochemistry, art, literature, computer science, music composition, mathematics and physics.Website: University of California - Santa BarbaraTuition: $12,192Starting Salary: $46,300Mid-Career Salary: $96,20015-Year Return: $1,068,75027 University of Texas – Austin Austin, TXUniversity of Texas, Austin, a public research university, is one of the nation’s largest schools and offers a large number of degree programs. University of Texas, Austin, the flagship institution of the University of Texas System, includes the highly ranked College of Education, McCombs School of Business, College of Fine Arts, Cockrell School of Engineering, College of Pharmacy, School of Nursing and the School of Social Work. The university provides hundreds of study abroad programs.Website: The University of Texas at AustinTuition: $9,816Starting Salary: $50,400Mid-Career Salary: $91,70015-Year Return: $1,065,75028 San Jose State University San Jose, CASan Jose State University, a public institution, part of the California State University system, offers a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The school has strong programs in the fields of education, journalism, healthcare, social work, art and music. Popular areas of study among graduate students include education, engineering, library and information science, and social work. San Jose State University provides Silicon Valley companies with computer science, engineering and business graduates.Website: San Jose State UniversityTuition: $7,303Starting Salary: $50,500Mid-Career Salary: $90,40015-Year Return: $1,056,75029 University of Maryland – College Park College Park, MDUniversity of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), the flagship campus of Maryland’s university system offer more than 120 bachelor’s degrees and more than 100 graduate degrees. UMCP, strong in the sciences, has several schools and departments with records of excellence.UCMP has a strong research orientation. UCMP is involved in cooperative projects with the National Institute of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Homeland Security. The Physical Science Complex has one of the world’s top quantum science laboratories.Website: University of Maryland – College ParkTuition: $9,162Starting Salary: $50,600Mid-Career Salary: $89,80015-Year Return: $1,053,00030 Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey) New Brunswick, NJRutgers University New Brunswick, a public institution, has five mini-campus named Cook, Douglass, Busch, College Avenue and Livingston. All the campuses have a unique environment. Busch Campus focuses mainly in academic areas related to the natural sciences. The Livingston Campus is home to the Rutgers Business School. The faculty at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, includes national and international experts in their field. Rutgers University, New Brunswick has more than 170 centers and institutes exploring a range of issues.Website: Rutgers University - New BrunswickTuition: $10,718Starting Salary: $49,700Mid-Career Salary: $90,40015-Year Return: $1,050,75031 University of Michigan – Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MIThe highly ranked University of Michigan, Ann Arbor provides a wide array of undergraduate and graduate degrees. The university includes the highly ranked College of Engineering, School of Education, Medical School, Law School, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, School of Nursing and the School of Public Health. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, a strong research institution, includes the Institute for Social Research, one of the world’s oldest and largest institutes for social sciences.Website: University of MichiganTuition: $12,948Starting Salary: $54,000Mid-Career Salary: $85,40015-Year Return: $1,045,50032 University of Washington – Seattle Seattle, WAUniversity of Washington, Seattle is the largest university on the west coast. The university includes the highly regarded School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Law, the Library and Information School, the College of Engineering and the School of Pharmacy. The university has strong programs in the liberal arts and sciences. More than a third of the University of Washington students enroll mostly or completely in online classes. The University of Washington is a major research school.Website: University of Washington – SeattleTuition: $12,397Starting Salary: $49,300Mid-Career Salary: $89,50015-Year Return: $1,041,00033 Clemson University (South Carolina) Clemson, SCClemson University, a public university and one of the nation’s major research schools, provides a variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees. Clemson University has many nationally ranked graduate programs. The university’s five colleges have more than 100 departments. The Calhoun Honors College educates gifted students who excelled in high school. Creative Inquiry, a unique form of undergraduate research, has a top priority at the university. Clemson University has a military presence.Website: Clemson UniversityTuition: $13,382Starting Salary: $49,000Mid-Career Salary: $89,70015-Year Return: $1,040,25034 George Mason University Fairfax, VAGeorge Mason University (GMU), a public university with several suburban campus locations, offers an array of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs from its colleges and schools. GMU includes the George Mason School of Law. George Mason University has strengths in the basic and applied sciences. George Mason University receives research support from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.Website: George Mason UniversityTuition: $9,908Starting Salary: $49,800Mid-Career Salary: $88,80015-Year Return: $1,039,50035 Southern Polytechnic State University (Georgia) Marietta, GASouthern Polytechnic State University, a public institution, offers a wide array of majors through its five schools: School of Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Construction Management, the School of Engineering, School of Computing and Software Engineering; and the School of Engineering Technology and Management.Southern Polytechnic University, part of the University System of Georgia, has a strong reputation in the areas of science, technology, engineering and related fields.Website: Southern Polytechnic State University Tuition: $5,388Starting Salary: $49,500Mid-Career Salary: $88,80015-Year Return: $1,037,25036 California State Polytechnic University – Pomona Pomona, CACalifornia State Polytechnic, Pomona, also known as Cal Poly Pomona, through eight colleges provides a variety of fields of study. The school has highly respected programs such as the engineering program. Cal Poly Pomona incorporates a learn-by-doing strategy into its project and presentation-based coursework. All of the academic areas utilize the teaching of theory through application. The students at Cal Poly Pomona also obtain a broad-based education via the general education program.Website: California State Polytechnic University – PomonaTuition: $5,472Starting Salary: $48,800Mid-Career Salary: $89,20015-Year Return: $1,035,00037 The College of William and Mary (Virginia) Williamsburg, VAThe Highly ranked College of William and Mary, a public institution, has a long history of liberal arts education. The college has a growing research and science curriculum with a commitment to undergraduate research. Undergraduates have opportunities to work with peers and experienced faculty mentors on projects.The College of William & Mary provides undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. The institutions highly ranked schools include the School of Education, Marshall-Wythe School of Law and the Mason School of Business.Website: College of William and MaryTuition: $10,428Starting Salary: $44,500Mid-Career Salary: $93,30015-Year Return: $1,033,50038 West Virginia U Institute of Technology (WVU Tech) Montgomery, WVWest Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech), a public institution and a division of West Virginia University provides an array of baccalaureate degrees. WVU Tech has gained recognition for its academic programs, especially in STEM subjects. WVU Tech provides nationally renowned ABET accredited engineering programs.The school includes the Leonard C. Nelson College of Engineering and Sciences and the College of Business, Humanities and Social Studies. The school’s strong STEM majors allows the school to provide high quality pre-professional programs.Website: West Virginia University Institute of TechnologyTuition: $5,808Starting Salary: $52,200Mid-Career Salary: $85,00015-Year Return: $1,029,00039 University of Minnesota – Twin Cities Minneapolis, MNUniversity of Minnesota, Twin Cities, a public research university and part of the University of Minnesota system, provides a large number of degree programs. Besides traditional degree programs the university offers bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, doctoral degree and specialty degrees completely online. The university includes the highly ranked College of Education and Human Development, the Carlson School of Management and the Law School. The University of Minnesota, Twin Cites has over 300 exchange programs around the world.Website: University of Minnesota Twin CitiesTuition: $12,060Starting Salary: $48,700Mid-Career Salary: $87,20015-Year Return: $1,019,25040 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NCNorth Carolina State University, also known as NC State, a public research institution, has received national and international rankings for its academic programs and research. NC State has an array of academic departments serving graduate students such as the highly ranked engineering school, well known for its nuclear and biological/agricultural engineering programs. NC State is part of the Research Triangle along with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University in Durham.Website: North Carolina State UniversityTuition: $8,206Starting Salary: $48,500Mid-Career Salary: $86,80015-Year Return: $1,014,75041 University of Arizona Tucson, AZUniversity of Arizona, a public research university offers a large number of academic and professional programs. The university includes the prestigious School of Public Administration and Policy, College of Engineering, College of Nursing and the Eller College of Management.Programs such as geosciences, management information systems and rehabilitation counseling have received high rankings. The university’s Department of Astronomy has received recognition as one of the best in the world. The university is a member of the Association of American Universities.Website: University of ArizonaTuition: $10,390Starting Salary: $48,400Mid-Career Salary: $86,90015-Year Return: $1,014,75042 University of Delaware Newark, DEUniversity of Delaware, includes seven colleges. Although the university receives public funding it has a private charter. The university provides a large number graduate degree programs. The highly ranked College of Engineering and the School of Education provide graduate programs. The university of Delaware also provides a large number of undergraduate programs. Students in the school’s nationally acclaimed Undergraduate Research Program work with faculty members as research assistants.Website: University of Delaware Tuition: $12,112Starting Salary: $50,300Mid-Career Salary: $85,00015-Year Return: $1,014,75043 University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, ILThe University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), a public research university, is one of the universities with the highest research classification from the Carnegie Foundation. Through the UIC Undergraduate Research Experience, college students can pair up with a faculty mentor and create a research project in an array of academic areas.UIC includes the recognized College of Education, Liautaud Graduate School of Business and an engineering school. The Honors College resembles a small liberal arts college situated in a large research university.Website: University of Illinois at ChicagoTuition: $10,406Starting Salary: $48,200Mid-Career Salary: $86,80015-Year Return: $1,012,50044 University of Alabama – Huntsville Huntsville, ALUniversity of Alabama, Huntsville, also known as UA Huntsville, is a public university and part of the University of Alabama System. The university is located in the Cummings Research Park, a major international center for advanced technological research. The school’s location provides faculty members and students unique opportunities. The university also helps NASA reach its goals. The University of Alabama, Huntsville has received recognition for its engineering and science programs.Website: University of Alabama - HuntsvilleTuition: $9,192Starting Salary: $49,600Mid-Career Salary: $85,10015-Year Return: $1,010,25045 University of Houston Houston, TXThe University of Houston, a public research university, operates more than 40 research centers and institutes on campus. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Houston as a Tier One research university. The University of Houston Law Center has received recognition for its intellectual property law, healthcare law and part-time law programs. The university also includes the Cullen College of Engineering, the C.T. Bauer College of Business and other graduate schools.Website: University of HoustonTuition: $9,318Starting Salary: $49,500Mid-Career Salary: $85,20015-Year Return: $1,010,25046 Miami University (Ohio) Oxford, OHMiami University, a public research university, provides a wide variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees. Graduate and undergraduate students have numerous opportunities to perform research. Miami University ranks first among public colleges in the United States for the rate of undergraduate students who study abroad.Miami University has the following academic divisions: The School of Education; College of Arts and Science; School of Engineering and Applied Science; College of Education, Health and Society; the Farmer School of Business and the School of Creative Arts, College of Professional Studies and Applied Sciences and the Graduate School.Website: Miami University of OhioTuition: $13,266Starting Salary: $47,300Mid-Career Salary: $87,20015-Year Return: $1,008,75047 Binghamton University (State University of New York) Binghamton, NYBinghamton, SUNY, a public research institution, has a dedication to undergraduate education. The school also provides graduate degrees from the highly ranked Department of Public Administration, Department of History and the Department of Psychology.Binghamton University has gained recognition for its sustainability efforts. The university has one of the nation’s largest study abroad programs. Binghamton University emphasis entrepreneurship via its Entrepreneurship Across the Curriculum program. Binghamton University consists of six schools.Website: Binghamton University (State University of New York)Tuition: $6,170Starting Salary: $47,200Mid-Career Salary: $86,90015-Year Return: $1,005,75048 Baruch College (City University of New York) New York City, NYCUNY, Bernard M Baruch College, known as Baruch College has three schools providing graduate and undergraduate programs: The Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, Zicklin School of Business and the School of Public Affairs. The Zicklin School of Business is one of the nation’s largest business schools and its received AACSB accreditation.The Division of Continuing and Professional Studies provides many non-degree and certificate courses. Baruch College provides solid education in business, the arts and sciences and professional education.Website: Baruch College (City University of New York)Tuition: $5,730Starting Salary: $48,500Mid-Career Salary: $85,40015-Year Return: $1,004,25049 Auburn University (Alabama) Auburn, ALAuburn University, a public university, offers more than 140 degree programs. Auburn University has highly ranked programs in the fields of pharmacy, architecture, engineering, veterinary science, forestry and business. Auburn University has graduated six astronauts. The university emphasizes international education.Auburn University has a global impact via modern agricultural extension as well as forestry/wildlife programs. The university provides vital research in the sciences, mathematics, pharmaceutical, nursing, education and human science areas.Website: Auburn UniversityTuition: $9,852Starting Salary: $45,500Mid-Career Salary: $87,90015-Year Return: $1,000,50050 James Madison University (Virginia) Harrisonburg, VAJames Madison University, a public research university, offers a large number of graduate and undergraduate degree programs. The university has its main emphasis on undergraduate students. James Madison University offers an education with a foundation based on a wide range of liberal arts.James Madison University has an extensive variety of professional and pre-professional programs enhanced by numerous learning experiences outside of the classroom. James Madison University has a strong study abroad program as well as exchange programs via partner institutions throughout the world.Website: James Madison UniversityTuition: $9,176Starting Salary: $48,000Mid-Career Salary: $85,20015-Year Return: $999,000The 20 Public Colleges With The Smartest StudentsPeter JacobsWith the rapidly rising price of college tuition, many top students are realizing you don't need to pay an arm and a leg for a quality education, and that state schools are just as great.The College of William and Mary is the public college with the smartest students, according to data put together by Niche. To compile this ranking, we looked at Niche's lists of smartest girls and smartest guys.We've included student quotes from Niche to illustrate the student intellect and academic caliber of each school.#20 University of Florida — Gainesville, FloridaAP Photo/John Raoux"I'm busy! But it's manageable. My program focuses on making connections among peers and professors, so we are a very close-knit bunch that provides each other with support whenever it's needed. Having the same classes with peers and professors allows close bonds to develop that will last a lifetime."Visit Niche for more on University of Florida.#19 SUNY Geneseo — Geneseo, New YorkVia Wikimedia Commons"This school is very rigorous and hard. However you know that you are getting an amazing education and are being taught by some of the best people. The workload is also tough but it's nothing you can't handle. As long as you keep on top of your work you will succeed."Visit Niche for more on SUNY Geneseo.#18 New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology — Socorro, New MexicoVia Flickr"There are a lot of classes and opportunities for extra-curricular activities. There are also a lot of people and professors that are included in the real-world of your future occupation and you can ask them to help you or include you in their research."Visit Niche for more on New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology.#17 California Polytechnic State University — San Luis Obispo, CaliforniaVia Wikimedia Commons"You literally learn by doing and it's the best. I actually remember the things I learn when I applied them in class and labs. It's awesome. Having to take GE's sucks, but it always does. Major courses are super awesome."Visit Niche for more on California Polytechnic State University — San Luis Obispo.#16 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — Urbana-Champaign, IllinoisFlickr/VSmithUK"There are many hard working students at University of Illinois. Since there are over 40,000 students, you'll find all sorts of people of your interest and similarities."Visit Niche for more on University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.#15 University of California, San Diego — San Diego, CaliforniaVia Flickr"The quality of people at the university is superb; intelligent, attractive, bright, and all extremely hard-working and sociable."Visit Niche for more on University of California, San Diego.#14 University of Wisconsin — Madison, WisconsinVia Flickr"Everyone here is very intelligent and extremely hard working. With all the hard work does come with a lot of fun ranging from fraternity events to football games to laying out on Bascom Hill, the people at this university are amazing to say the least."Visit Niche for more on University of Wisconsin — Madison.#13 Truman State University — Kirksville, MissouriVia Wikimedia Commons"The academics at Truman definitely keep students busy but aren't unmanageable especially with a staff that is, for the most part, open and more than willing in aiding in student success."Visit Niche for more on Truman State University.#12 University of California, Davis — Davis, CaliforniaVia Wikimedia Commons"My professors are all so knowledgeable and helpful and most TAs are really great and helpful as well. The curriculum are great. I always feel challenged."Visit Niche for more on University of California, Davis.#11 Michigan Technological University — Houghton, MichiganVia Wikimedia Commons"I love my professors — all of them seem dedicated to their job, as well as understanding. The workload is more than most schools, but the best isn't the easiest!"Visit Niche for more on Michigan Technological University.#10 University of Maryland, Baltimore County — Baltimore, MarylandVia Wikimedia Commons"UMBC is a very good school with heavy emphasis on the sciences. Most students are either science majors or are science majors who want to be doctors. Obviously most students are very serious about their academics."Visit Niche for more on University of Maryland, Baltimore County.#9 New College of Florida — Sarasota, FloridaVia Flickr"Unlike most other undergrad programs, New College puts you in direct contact with your professors- who actively encourage you to visit them to talk about the classes and possible projects. If you have a dream, New College will work with you to make it happen."Visit Niche for more on New College of Florida.#8 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — Chapel Hill, North CarolinaGrant Halverson/Getty Images"Heavy workload, but manageable. Professors are simply the best in their field. Popular study areas are biology, psychology, business."Visit Niche for more on University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.#7 Colorado School of Mines — Golden, ColoradoVia Flickr"Mines is great on the academic side. The work load is difficult but reasonable. The professors are all very invested in your process of learning and provide plenty of help for your success. The curriculum is well known around the country for being one of the best in Engineering."Visit Niche for more on Colorado School of Mines.#6 University of Michigan — Ann Arbor, MichiganGregory Shamus/Getty Images"I'm not exaggerating when I say the academics here are 'the best.' They truly push students to grow and push past limits they place on themselves. The environment is so conducive to learning and there are so many places to meet up with friends, lab partners, or members of a group project to get all your work done."Visit Niche for more on University of Michigan — Ann Arbor.#5 University of California, Los Angeles — Los Angeles, CaliforniaVia Wikimedia Commons"There are students from different backgrounds whom which I learn a lot from. There is a lot of reading but it's interesting and doable. There are also a lot of internship opportunities, as well as scholarship opportunities."Visit Niche for more on University of California, Los Angeles.#4 University of Virginia — Charlottesville, VirginiaVia Wikimedia Commons"The academics here are stellar. Brilliant, engaging, helpful professors are the norm. Though I don't have experience with faculty in every department, my first hand combined with what I've heard from friends points towards high quality across the board."Visit Niche for more on University of Virginia.#3 Georgia Institute of Technology — Atlanta, GeorgiaScott Cunningham/Getty Images"I think there is nothing sexier than intelligence in both men and women, and the good thing about Tech is that most everyone is smart here."Visit Niche for more on Georgia Institute of Technology.#2 University of California, Berkeley — Berkeley, CaliforniaVia Wikimedia Commons"Berkeley is nationally ranked in almost every academic discipline. If you want great academics at a fraction of the cost of an Ivy, then look no further."Visit Niche for more on University of California, Berkeley.#1 College of William & Mary — Williamsburg, VirginiaAP Photo/Scott K. Brown"Studying at William and Mary is strongly emphasized. Everyone pushes themselves to work hard and get good grades. Those who go above and beyond are highly respected. We pride ourselves on our studying habits and our willingness to work hard to learn. We like to feel challenged."Visit Niche for more on College of William and Mary.

Ah, the sort of challenging question that I like to ponder about on an otherwise lazy Saturday morning in the San Francisco Bay Area! I began my career in AI as a young Master’s student in Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, actually enrolled as a EE major, but got enchanted by Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher and Bach book into studying AI. That was 1982, so I’ve been working in AI and ML for the past 36 years. Along the way, I’ve read, oh, easily about 10,000 papers or so, give or take a few hundred. So, among these thousands of papers, now, I have to pick the “top 20 papers”, so that you, the interested Quora reader, can get a glimpse of what attracts someone like me to give up everything in pursuit of this possibly idealized quest to make machines as smart as humans and other animals. Now, there’s a challenge I can't resist.OK, any list like this is going to be 1) hopelessly biased by my personal choices 2) not entirely representative of modern AI. 3) a VERY long read! Remember that a lot of us who got into AI in the late 1970s or early 80s did so far before there was any commercial hope that AI would pay off. We were drawn to the scientific quest underlying AI: how to build a theory that explain how the brain works, how the mind was the result of the brain etc. None of us had any clue, it is safe to say, that in the early 21st century, AI would become a hugely profitable venture.But, I’m going to argue that now more than ever, it is vitally important for those entering the AI field to understand 1) where did the ideas for AI come from 2) that insights into the brain come from many fields, from neuroscience and biology to psychology and economics and from mathematics as well, so my choice of papers reflects that, and I’ve chosen papers from multiple academic fields. I’ve also not shied away from papers that are critical of things that you might believe in deeply (e.g., the power of statistical machine learning to solve potentially any AI problem).I’ll try to pepper the list with my chatty commentary as well, so it’s not going to be one of those all too boring “here’s 20 things you should know about blah”, which is all too often what you see on the web. But, with my commentary, this is going to be a really long reply. What I want to give you a glimpse of is the panoply of fascinating characters who made up this interdisciplinary quest to understand brains from a scientific and computational point of view, how diverse their backgrounds were, and what an amazingly accomplished set of minds they were. It is to their credit that AI has come along as quickly as it has, barely 60 years since it began. Without such a dazzling collection of minds working on the problem, we would have probably taken much longer to make any real progress.The list is somewhat historical and arranged chronologically as far as it is possible. I’ve also tried to keep in mind that the point of this list is that it should be comprehensible to a newbie entering the field of AI, so much as I like to include some heavy hitting math papers (of which I’ve selected a couple), I’ve included a few very sophisticated highly technical papers, since you need to get a sense of what AI is in the 21st century. So, the readability of this top 20 list varies widely: some papers are easy to get through in a Sunday afternoon. Others — well, let’s say that you’ll need several weeks of concentrated reading to make headway, assuming you have the math background. But, there are not many of the latter, so don't worry about not having the right background (yet).Let’s begin, as they say, at the beginning…..A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity, by Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts (Univ. of Chicago), vol. 5, pp. 115–133, 1943. (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./epxing/Class/10715/reading/McCulloch.and.Pitts.pdf). This is the first great paper of modern computational neuroscience, written by two brilliant researchers, one senior and distinguished (McCullough), the other, Pitts, a dazzling prodigy who had had no education of any sort, but talked his way into a position with McCullough. Pitts grew up in inner city Detroit, and because he was mercilessly beaten up by gang members who were older than him, he took refuge in the Detroit Public Library. It is rumored he devoured all 1000+ pages of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica in one marathon reading session of several days and nights. This is not easy reading — it is a dense logical summary of much of modern math. Pitts was brave enough, even through he was barely in high school and had had no education, to audaciously write to Bertrand Russell in England, then a famous literary figure would go on to win the Nobel Prize in literature, as well as a great mathematician, pointing out a few errors and typos in the magnum opus. This young boy so impressed Russell that later he wrote him a glowing recommendation to work with Warren McCullough. Thus was born a great collaboration, and both moved shortly to MIT, where they came under the influence of none other than Norbert Wiener, wunderkind mathematician who invented the term “cybernetics” (the study of AI in man and machines). McCullough was a larger than life character who worked all night, and seemingly subsisted on diet of “Irish whiskey and ice cream”. Pitts wrote a dazzlingly beautiful PhD thesis on “three-dimensional neural nets”, and then, as a tragic Italian opera would have it, everything fell apart. Wiener and McCullough had a falling out (so petty was the reason that I will not repeat it here), and thus, McCullough stopped being actively working with Pitt, and Pitt sort of just faded away, but sadly, not before burning the only copy of his unpublished PhD dissertation before he defended it. No copy has yet been found of this work. Read the tragic story here — warning: keep a box of Kleenex handy for at the end, you will cry! — The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic - Issue 21: Information - Nautilus (read also the classic paper “What the Frog’s Eye tells the Frog’s Brain” https://hearingbrain.org/docs/letvin_ieee_1959.pdf by the same duo. A great modern paper is the recent breakthrough in biology at Caltech where the facial code used in primate brains to identify faces has finally been cracked — The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain. — showing that in one narrow area, we may know what the human eye is telling the human brain, almost 60 years after McCullough and Pitts asked the question).Steps towards Artificial Intelligence, Marvin Minsky, Proceedings of the IRE, January 1960 (http://worrydream.com/refs/Minsky%20-%20Steps%20Toward%20Artificial%20Intelligence.pdf). Many date the beginning of AI formally to this article, which really outlined the division of AI into different subfields, many of which are still around, so this paper really can be said to have been the first to lay out the modern field of AI in its current guise. Minksy was a prodigy who did a PhD in math at Princeton (like many others in AI currently and in the past), and after a dazzling postdoc at Harvard as a Fellow (where he did early work in robotics), started the highly influential MIT AI Lab, which he presided over for a number of decades. He was a larger than life character, and those who knew him well had a large stock of stories about him. Among the best I’ve heard is one where he was interviewing a faculty candidate — a rather nervous young PhD who was excitedly explaining his work on the blackboard — when the student turned around, he discovered he was alone in his office. Minksy had disappeared during his explanation. The student was mortified, but Minksy later explained that what the student had told him sounded so interesting that Minksy had to step outside and take a walk to think the ideas over. Minsky was a polymath, at home in theoretical computer science where wrote some influential papers and a book, in psychology where he was an avid disciple of Freud and wrote a paper on AI and jokes and what it meant about the subconscious, in education where he pioneered new educational learning technology, and many other fields.Programs with Common Sense, John McCarthy, in Minsky, Semantic Information Processing, pp. 403–418, 1968. (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcc59.ps) McCarthy was the other principal founder of AI, who after a short period of working at MIT, left to found the Stanford AI Lab, which in due course proved to be just as influential as its East coast cousin. McCarthy above all was a strong believer in the power of knowledge, and in the need for formal representations of knowledge. In this influential paper, he articulates his ideas for a software system called “an Advice Taker”, which can be instructed to do a task using hints. The Advice Taker is also endowed with common sense, and can deduce obvious conclusions from the advice given to it. For example, a self-driving car can be given the official rules of the road, as well as some advice about how humans drive (such as “in general, humans do not follow the speed limit on most highways, but tend to drive 5–10 miles above the speed limit”). Critical to McCarthy’s conceptualization, it would not be sufficient to have a neural net learn the driving task. Knowledge had to represented explicitly so it could be reasoned about. He says something profound in the paper, which may shock most modern ML researchers. He says in page 4 in italics (emphasis) that “In order for a program to be capable of learning something it must first be capable of being told it”! By this definition, McCarthy would not view most deep learning systems as really doing “learning” (for none of the deep learning systems can be told what they learn). McCarthy was also famous for his work on lambda calculus, inventing the programming language LISP, using which much of AI research was then carried out. Most of my early research in AI was done using LISP, including my first (and most highly cited paper) work on using reinforcement learning to teach robots in the early 1990s at IBM.Why should Machines Learn, by Herbert Simon, in Michalski, Carbonell, and Mitchell (editors), Machine Learning, 1983 (http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=33928). Herb Simon was a Nobel laureate in Economics, who spent his entire academic career at Carnegie Institute of Technology (later Carnegie Mellon University), doing much to build the luster and prestige of this now world-class university. He was one of the true polymaths, at home in half a dozen departments, from computer science to economics to business administration and psychology, in all of which he made foundational contributions. He was a gifted speaker, and I was particularly fortunate to be able to attend several presentations by Simon during the mid 1980s when I spent several years at CMU. In this article, Simon asks the question that very few AI researchers today bother asking: why should machines learn? According to Simon, why should machines, which can be programmed, bother with this slow and tedious form of knowledge acquisition, when something far quicker and more reliable is available. You’ll have to read the article to find his answers, but this article is valuable for giving perhaps the first scientific definition of the field of machine learning, a definition that is still valid today. Simon made many other contributions to AI, including his decades long collaboration with Allan Newell, another AI genius at CMU, whose singular ability in asking the right questions, made him a truly gifted researcher. It is rumored that computer chess came to life when Allan Newell mentioned casually in a conversation in the CMU CS common room about how the branching factor of chess is not all difficult to emulate in hardware, a comment that Hans Berliner followed up on in bringing the first modern chess player, Deep Thought, to fruition (the same CMU team went to IBM, built Deep Blue which of course beat Kasparov).Non-cooperative games, PhD thesis, John Nash, Princeton. (Non-Cooperative Games) John Nash came to Princeton as a 20 year old mathematician from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1948 with a one line recommendation letter: “This man is a genius”. His PhD thesis would fully affirm his alma mater’s assessment of his capabilities. Nash took the work of von Neumann and Morgenstern’s zero-sum games into a whole new level with his dazzling generalization, which would earn him a Nobel prize decades later. Most of Nash’s history has been recounted in Sylvia Nasar’s wonderful biography A Beautiful Mind (later made into a movie starring Russell Crowe as John Nash). Legend had it that von Neumann himself did not think much of Nash’s work, calling it “another fixed point theorem”. Nash finished his ground breaking thesis in less than a year from start to finish. He arrived in Princeton in September 1948, and in November 1949, Solomon Lefschetz, a distinguished mathematician communicated the results of Nash’s thesis to the National Academy of Sciences meeting. Today, billions of dollars of product (from wireless cellular bandwidths to oil prospects) are traded using Nash’s ideas of game theory. The most influential model in deep learning today is the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), and the key question being studied for GANs is whether and when do they converge to a Nash equilibrium. So, 70 years after Nash defended his short but Nobel prize winning thesis at Princeton, his work is still having a huge impact in ML and AI. Nash’s work also become a widely used framework to study evolutionary dynamics, giving rise to a new field called evolutionary game theory, pioneer by John Maynard Smith. Game theory is a crucial area for not only AI but also for CS. It has been said that the “Internet is just a game. We have to find what the equilibrium solution is”. Algorithmic game theory is a burgeoning area of research, studying things like “The Price of Anarchy”, or how solutions to hard optimization problems can be solved by letting millions of agents make locally selfish decisions. Nash’s PhD advisor at Princeton was Tucker, who Nash called “The Machine”. His second reader of his PhD thesis was Turkey, who can be called one of the fathers of modern machine learning, since he invented exploratory data analysis at Princeton (and later also invented the Fast Fourier Transform).Maximum likelihood from Incomplete Data using the EM Algorithm, Dempster, Laird, and Rubin (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 1977) (Maximum Likelihood from Incomplete Data via the EM Algorithm). In the mid 1980s, ML took a dramatic turn, along with AI, towards the widespread use of probabilistic and statistical methods. One of the most influential models of machine learning during the 1990s was based on Fisher’s notion of maximum likelihood estimation. Since most interesting probabilistic models in AI had latent (unobserved) variables, maximum likelihood could not be directly applied. The EM algorithm, popularized by three Harvard statisticians, came the rescue. It is probably the most widely used statistical method in ML in the past 25 years, and well worth knowing. This paper, which is cited over 50,000 times on Google Scholar, requires a certain level of mathematical sophistication, but it is representative of modern ML, and much of the edifice of modern ML is based on ideas like EM. A very simple way to think of EM is in terms of “data hallucination”. Let’s say you want to compute the mean of 20 numbers, but forgot to measure the last 5 numbers. Well, you could compute the mean over the 15 numbers only, or you could do something clever, namely put in an initial guess of the mean for each of the missing 5 numbers. This leads to an easy recurrence relation that lets you find the true mean. In the one dimensional case, this happens to be the same as ignoring the last 5 numbers, but in the two dimensional case, where one or the other dimension may be different, EM finds a different solution.A Theory of the Learnable, by Les Valiant, Communications of the ACM, 1984. (https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~mehlhorn/SeminarEvolvability/ValiantLearnable.pdf). George Orwell wrote a brilliant novel about the rise of the all powerful all knowing Government, which spies on everyone. Well, in the same year of the novel, Les Valiant, a brilliant computer scientist at Harvard proved that Orwell’s fears could not be completely realized due to intrinsic limitations on what can be learned from data in polynomial time. That is, even if the Government could spy on individuals, it is possible to construct functions whose identity may be hidden because it would require intractable computation to discover them. Valiant’s work lead to his winning the Turing award several decades later, computer science’s version of the Nobel Prize. What Valiant did in this landmark paper was articulate a theory of machine learning that is analogous to complexity theory for computation. He defined PAC learning, or probably approximately correct learning, as a model of knowledge acquisition from data, and showed examples where a class of functions was PAC learnable, and also speculated about non-learnable functions. Valiant’s work in the past three decades has been hugely influential. For example, the most widely used ensemble method in ML is called boosting, and came out as a direct result of PAC learning. Also to be noted is that support vector machines or SVMs were justified using the tools of PAC learning. This is a short but beautifully written paper, and while it is not an easy read, your ability to understand and grasp this paper will make the difference between whether you are a ML scientist or an ML programmer (not to make any value judgements of either, the world needs plenty of both types of people!).Intelligence without representation, Rodney Brooks, IJCAI 1987 Computers and Thought Award lecture (http://www.fc.uaem.mx/~bruno/material/brooks_87_representation.pdf). Brooks based his ideas for building “behavior-based robots” on ethology, the study of insect behavior. What ethologists found was that ants, bees, and lots of other insects were incredibly sophisticated in their behaviors, building large complex societies (ant colonies, bee hives), and yet their decision making capacity seemed to be based on fairly simple rules. Brooks took this type of idea to heart, and launched a major critique at the then representation heavy apparatus of modern knowledge-based AI. He argued that robots built using knowledge-based AI would never function well enough in the real world to survive. A robot crossing the road that sees a truck and begins to reason about what it should do would get flattened by the truck before its reasoning engine came up with a decision. According to Brooks, this failure was due to a misunderstanding of how brains are designed to produce behavior. In animals, he argued, behaviors are hard wired in a layered highly modularized form, so that complexity emerges from the interleaving of many simple behaviors. One of his early PhD students, Jonathan Connell, showed that you can design a complex robot, called Herbert (after Herb Simon), that could do a complex task of searching an indoor building for soda cans and picking them and throwing them into trash, all the while having no explicit representation anywhere of the task. Later, after Jon Connell graduated, he came to work for IBM Research, where he and I collaborated on applying RL to teach behavior-based robots new behaviors. Brooks was a true pioneer of robotics, and inserted a real-world emphasis in his work that was till then sorely lacking. He had a common-sense wisdom about how to apply the right sort of engineering design to a problem, and was not enamored of using fancy math to solve problems that had far simpler solutions. Much of the success of modern autonomous driving systems owes something to Brooks’ ideas. It is possible that the tragic accident in Arizona involving an Uber vehicle might have been averted had that particular vehicle been outfitted with a behavior-based design (which countermands bad decisions, like the one the Uber vehicle allegedly made, of labeling he pedestrian as a false positive).Natural Gradient Works Efficiently in Learning, Amari, Neural Computation, 1989 (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.452.7280&rep=rep1&type=pdf). One of the living legends of statistics is the Indian scientist C.R. Rao, now in his 90s, who basically has done the most since Fisher in building up the edifice of modern statistics. C. R. Rao invented much of modern multivariate statistics as a young researcher at Univ. of Cambridge, England, due to his study of fossils of human bones from Ethiopia. In a classic paper written in his 20s, C. R. Rao showed that the space of probability distributions is curved, like Einstein’s space-time, and has a Riemannian inner product defined on the space of tangents at each point on its surface. He later showed how the Fisher information metric could be used to define this inner product. Amari, a brain science researcher in Japan, used this insight to define natural gradient methods, a widely used class of methods to train neural networks, where the direction pursued to modify the weights at any given point is not the Euclidean direction, but the direction that is based on analyzing the curved structure of the underlying probability manifold. Amari showed natural gradient often works better, and later wrote a highly sophisticated treatise on information geometry, expanding on his work on natural gradients. Many years later, in 2013, a group of PhD students and I showed that natural gradient methods could actually be viewed as special cases of a powerful class of dual space gradient methods called mirror descent, invented by Russian optimization researchers Nemirovksy and Yudin. Mirror descent has now become a basis for one of the most widely used gradient methods in deep learning called ADAGRAD by Duchi (now at Stanford), Hazan (now at Princeton) and Singer (now at Google). It is very important to understand these various formulations of gradient descent methods, which requires exploring some beautiful connections between geometry and statistics.Learning to Predict by the Methods of Temporal Differences, by Richard Sutton, Machine Learning journal, pp 9–44, 1988 (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9c06/865e912788a6a51470724e087853d7269195.pdf). TD learning remains the most widely used reinforcement learning method, 34 years after they were invented by UMass PhD student Richard Sutton, working in collaboration with his former PhD advisor, Andrew Barto, both of whom can be said to have laid the foundations of the modern field of RL (on whose work the company Deep Mind was originally formed, and then acquired by Google). It is worth noting that Arthur Samuel in 1950s experimented with a simple form of TD learning, and used it to teach an IBM 701 to play checkers, which can be said to be the first implementation of both RL and ML in the modern era. But Rich Sutton brought TD -learning to life, and if you read the above paper, you’ll see the mathematical sophistication he brought to its study was far beyond Samuel. TD learning is now far beyond this paper, and if you want to see how mathematically sophisticated its modern variants are, I will point you to the following paper (which builds on the work of one of my former PhD students, Bo Liu, who brought the study of gradient TD methods to a new level with his work on dual space analysis). Janet Yu has written a very long (80+ pages) dense mathematical treatise on the modern version of gradient TD, which you have to be very strong in math to understand fully ([1712.09652] On Convergence of some Gradient-based Temporal-Differences Algorithms for Off-Policy Learning). TD remains one of the few ML methods for which there is some evidence that it is biologically plausible. The brain seems to encode TD error using dopamine neurotransmitters. The study of TD in the brain is a very active area of research (see http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~dayan/papers/sdm97.pdf).Human learning in Atari, Tsividis et al., AAAI 2017 (http://gershmanlab.webfactional.com/pubs/Tsividis17.pdf). Deep reinforcement learning was popularized in a sensational paper in Nature (Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning) by a large group of Deep Mind researchers, and it is by now so well known and cited that I resisted the temptation to include it in my top 20 list (where most people would put it). It has led to large numbers of follow on papers, but many of these seem to miss the fairly obvious fact that there is a huge gulf between the speed at which humans learn Atari games and TD Q-learning with convolutional neural nets does so. This beautiful paper by cognitive scientists at MIT and Harvard shows that humans learn many of the Atari games in a matter of minutes in real time play, whereas deep RL methods require tens of millions of steps (which would be many months of human time, perhaps even years!). So, deep RL cannot be the ultimate solution to the Atari problem, even if it is currently perhaps the best we can do. There is a huge performance gap between humans and machines here, and if you are a young ML researcher, this is where I would go to make the next breakthrough. Humans seem to do much more than deep RL when learning to play Atari.Distributed Optimization and Statistical Learning via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers, Boyd et al., Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning, 2011 (Distributed Optimization and Statistical Learning via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers, which has MATLAB code as well). The 21st century has arrived, and with it, the dawn of cloud computing, and machine learning is poised to exploit these large numbers of cloud based computational structures. This very long and beautifully written paper by Stanford optimization guru Stephen Boyd and colleagues shows how to design cloud based ML algorithms using a broad and powerful framework called Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (or ADMMs). As the saying goes in the Wizard of Oz, “we are no longer in Kansas, Toto”. Namely, with this paper, we are now squarely in modern machine learning land, where the going gets tough (but, then as the saying goes, “the tough get going”). This is a mathematically deep and intense paper, of more than 100 pages, so it is not an easy read (unless, that is, your are someone like Walter Pitts!). But, the several weeks or months you spend reading it will greatly improve your ability to see how to exploit modern optimization knowledge to speed up many machine learning methods. What is provided here is a generic tool box, and you can design many specialized variants (including Hadoop based variants, as shown in the paper). To understand this paper, you need to understand duality theory, and Boyd himself has written a nice book on convex optimization to help you bridge that chasm. The paper is highly cited, for good reason, as it is a model of clarity.Learning Deep Architectures for AI, by Bengio, TR 1312, Univ. of Montreal (https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lisa/pointeurs/TR1312.pdf) (also a paper published in the journal Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning). Bengio has done more than almost anyone else in popularizing deep learning, and is also one of its primary originators and innovators. In this paper, he lays out a compelling vision for why AI and ML systems need to incorporate ideas from deep learning, and while many of the specifics he says have changed due to the rapid progress in deep learning in the last few years, this paper is a classic that bears well. This paper was written as counter point to the then popular approach of shallow architectures in machine learning, such as kernel methods. Bengio is giving another of his popular tutorials on deep learning at the forthcoming IJCAI conference in July in Sweden, in case you are interested in attending the conference or the tutorial. I don't have to say much more about deep learning, as it is the subject of a barrage of publicity these days. Suffice it to say that today AI is very much in the paradigm of deep learning (meaning a framework in which every problem is posed as a problem of deep learning, whether it is the right approach or not!). Time will tell how well deep learning survives in its current form. There are beginning to be worries about the robustness of deep learning solutions (the Imagenet architectures seem very vulnerable to random noise, which humans can’t even see, let along respond to), and the sample complexity seems formidable still. Scalability remains an open question, but deep learning has shown remarkable performance in many areas, including computer vision (if you download the latest version of MATLAB R2018a, you can run the demo image recognition program with a web cam with objects in your own house, and decide for yourself how well you think deep learning works in the real world).Theoretical Impediments to Machine Learning, with Seven Sparks from the Causal Revolution, by Judea Pearl, Arxiv 2018. ([1801.04016] Theoretical Impediments to Machine Learning With Seven Sparks from the Causal Revolution). Pearl is in my view the Isaac Newton of AI. He developed the broad probabilistic framework of graphical models, which dominated AI in the 1990s-2010s. He subsequently went into a different direction with his work on causal models, and now argues that probabilities are “an epiphenomenon” (or a surface property, of a much deeper causal truth). Pearl’s work on causal models has yet to gain the same traction in AI as his earlier work on graphical models (which is a major subfield in both AI and ML). Largely, the reasons have to do with the sort of applications that causal models fit well with. Pearl is focusing on domains like healthcare, education, climate change, societal models etc. where interventions are needed to change the status quo. In these hugely important practical applications, he argues that descriptive statistics is not the end goal, but causal models are. His 2009 2nd edition of Causality is still the most definitive modern treatment of the topic, and well worth acquiring.Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decisions under Risk, by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Econometrica, pp. 263–291, 1979. Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel prize in Economics for this work, with his collaborator Amos Tversky (who sadly died, and could not share in the prize). In this pathbreaking work, they asked themselves the simple question: how do humans make decisions under uncertainty? Do they follow the standard economic model of maximizing expected utility? If I gave you the choice between two outcomes: choose Door 1, and with 50% probability, you get no cash prize, or you get $300; alternatively if you choose Door 2, you get a guaranteed prize of $100. It perhaps won't surprise you that many humans choose Door 2, even through expected utility theory shows you should choose Door 1( since the expected utility is $150, much higher than Door 2). What’s going on? Well, humans tend to be risk averse. We would rather have the $100 for sure, than risk getting nothing with Door 1. This beautiful paper, which has been cited over 50,000 times, explores such questions in a number of beautiful simple experiments that been repeated all over the world with similar results. Well, here’s the rub. Much of the theory of modern probabilistic decision making and reinforcement learning in AI is based on maximizing expected utility (Markov decision processes, Q-learning, etc.). If KT is right, then much of modern AI is barking up the wrong tree! If you care about how humans actually make decisions, should you continue to chose an incorrect approach? Your choice. Read this paper and decide.Towards an Architecture for Never-ending Language Learning, Carlson et al., AAAI 2010. Humans learn over a period of decades, but most machine learning systems learn over a much shorter period of time, often just a single task. This CMU effort led by my former PhD advisor, Thomas Mitchell, explores how a machine learning system can learn over a very long period of time, by exploring the web, and learning millions of useful facts. You can interact with the actual NELL system online at Carnegie Mellon University. NELL is a fascinating example of how the tools of modern computer technology, namely the world wide web, makes it possible to design ML systems that can run forever. NELL could potentially live longer than any of us, and constantly acquire facts. One issue, at the heart of recent controversies, is “fake news”, of course. How does NELL know what it has learned is true? The web is full of fake assertions. NELL currently uses a human vetting approach of deciding which facts it learns are really to be trusted. Similar systems can be designed for image labeling, language interactions, and many others.Topology and Data, by Gunnar Carlson, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, April 2009 (http://www.ams.org/images/carlsson-notes.pdf). The question that many researchers are interested in knowing the answer to is: where is ML going in the next decade? This well known Stanford mathematician is arguing in favor of the use of more sophisticated methods from topology, a well developed area of math that studies the abstract properties of shape. Topology is what mathematicians use to decide that a coffee cup (with a handle) and a doughnut are essentially the same, since one can be smoothly deformed into the other without cutting. Topology has one great strength: it can be used to analyze data even when standard smoothness assumptions in ML are not possible to make. It goes without saying that the mathematical sophistication needed here is quite high, but Carlson refrains from getting very deep into the technical subject matter, giving for the most part, high level examples of what structure can be inferred using the tools of computational topology.2001: A Space Odyssey, book by Arthur C. Clarke, and movie by Stanley Kubrick. My next and last choice of reading — this has gone on long enough, and both you and I are getting a bit tired by now — is not an AI paper, but a movie and the associated book. The computer HAL in Kubrick’s movie 2001 is to my mind the best exemplar of an AI based intelligent system, one that is hopefully realizable soon. 2001 was released in 1968, exactly 50 years from now, and its 50th anniversary was marked recently. Many of my students and colleagues, I find, have not seen 2001. That is indeed a sacrilege. If you are all all interested in AI or ML, you owe it to yourself to see this movie, or read the book, and preferably do both. It is in my mind the most intelligent science fiction movie ever made, and it puts all later movies to shame (no, there is no silly laser sword fights or fake explosions or Darth Vaders here!). Instead, Stanley Kubrick designed the movie to be as realistic as the technology from 1960s would allow, and it is surprisingly modern even today. HAL is of course legendary from his voice (“I’m sorry Dave” is now available as a ring tone on many cellphones). But, HAL is also a great example of how modern AI will work with humans, and help assist many functions. Many long voyages into space, such as Mars or beyond, cannot be done with a HAL, as humans will have to sleep or be in hibernation to save on storage for food etc. There is a nice book by Stork on doing a scene by scene analysis of HAL in the movie, with where AI is in the 21st century. This book is also worth acquiring.OK, I’m ending this uber long reply two papers short of the required 20, but I’m sure I’ve given you plenty of material to read and digest. I did also cheat a bit here and there, and gave you multiple papers to read per bullet. Happy reading. Hope your journey into the fascinating world of AI is every bit as rewarding and fun as mine has been over the past 30+ years.