Announcing Fall 2023 Course Schedules - Fractal University
Classes, classes! Get your classes here!
We’re so excited to kick off our first semester of classes at Fractal University. Remember, applications close August 17th and Orientation is September 4th.
For prospective students:
Apply to your classes below, you must apply to each class separately
Start your Substack (if you don’t already have one)! So we can all share one public, intellectual commons, all students at Fractal University will publish their work on Substack. You can start yours here:
You can add the fall calendar to your calendar here. You are admitted to the school and eligible to attend fall events if you are admitted into at least 1 class.
We’re launching with 4 classes:
How to Live Near Your Friends, a practical guide to building an in-person community with your friends and loved ones
Foundations of Computing: From NAND to Tetris, build a modern computer from circuits. No prerequisite knowledge required.
Foundations of New York, on the history and governance of New York City
Building LLMs in Practice (Based on HuggingFace NLP), apply LLMs to practical, real-world problems. Build an LLM that runs on your smartphone.
Read more and apply below!
FR10: How to Live Near Your Friends
Instructor: Priya Rose, priyalghose@gmail.com
Syllabus: Click Here
Location: 248 Mckibbin St
Time: Saturday 11 am - 1 PM
Capacity: 10
Price: $30-300 (sliding scale, pay what you can afford)
Application Type: Separate Application Required ⚠️
CS: Foundations of Computing: From NAND to Tetris
Instructor: Andrew Rose, ajroberts0417@gmail.com
Syllabus: Click Here (Course designed by Noam Nisan, Shimon Schocken)
Location: Google’s Pier 57
Time: W 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Capacity: 10
Price: Free
Application Type: Common Application ✔️
MNY 101: Foundations of New York
Note to the reader: Foundations of New York is a little different from our other courses, because it has already been taught 10 times, so there is already a large alumni community and Daniel has recently announced the creation of his own school.
That being said, Fractal University is designed to be decentralized, with each teacher essentially running their own “school within a school”.
Instructor: Daniel Golliher, daniel@maximumnewyork.com
Syllabus: Click Here
Location: Near Madison Square
Time: (tentatively) Mondays September 11th - November 13, 6:30 - 8:30 PM, depending on student availability
Capacity: 20
Price: $0-3000 (sliding scale, pay what you can afford)
Application Type: Separate Application Required ⚠️
Building LLMs in Practice (Based on HuggingFace NLP):
Instructor: Chris Kroenke
Location: Merlin’s Third Place, 248 Mckibbin St
Time: Sundays 11:00 AM -- 1:30 PM EST
Capacity: 10
Price: $30-300 (sliding scale, pay what you can afford)
Application Type: Common Application ✔️
“Reading a couple hundred books a year is the bare minimum. It’s just the baseline. You also need to be embedded in a community of others who have diverse perspectives to bounce your ideas off of. The key for autodidact-types is to set up ways to avoid insularity.”
— Alan Kay