Welcome to my blog!
Musing, wanderings & and learnings
Christopher M. Stewart, Ph.D.
Stanford AI Professional Program: NLP with Deep Learning
Spring 2026I am currently working on completing Stanford Engineering’s Artificial Intelligence Professional Program and am taking XCS224N: Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning. The course covers 10 modules and 5 assignments, providing deep theoretical and practical grounding in modern NLP. Below is a summary of my notes from the first two modules, followed by the full reference document.
FNotes: The embedded PDF below contains my complete reference notes from Modules 1 and 2 of XCS224N, including mathematical derivations, worked examples, and key takeaways for later modules. I'll keep it current as I progress through the course's modules. The math is intense for me, but I'm lucky to have time to work on digesting it right now.
RAG via Hierarchical Bayesian Language Modeling
LinkedIn Post · March 1, 2026This post previews a forthcoming COLM submission about automatic prompt optimization with neural and non-neural RAG for financial question-answering. Is there an alternative to RAG? Maybe something Bayesian? Perhaps even better than neural embeddings and similarity in some cases? The discussion touches on AI, NLP, and practical considerations for building effective retrieval pipelines.