Course Nomenclature in our Imminent Data Theory Major

The UCLA mathematics department has a course called "Math 142: Mathematical Modeling", and my new lower-division mathematical-modeling course for our new Data Theory major was thus given the label "Math 42".

Given such an opportunity, I needed an appropriate name for the course. pic.twitter.com/mUGK1th012

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) March 1, 2019

"'C' is for Cookie": Academic Evaluation Edition

Comment: "'C' is for cookie. That's good enough for me!"

Comment 2: Apparently, some of my what we did in mathematics in Somerville was an even better idea than I thought. ;)

'The provision of chocolate cookies had a significant effect on course evaluation. These findings question the validity of (student evaluations of teaching) and their use in making widespread decisions within a faculty.' HT @KStackWhitney (photo: Dschwen) https://t.co/lO1v18tmf5 pic.twitter.com/N6epK3GinU

— Erika Marín-Spiotta (@emsaurios) December 7, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Jacquelyn Gill.)

New Course Proposal (University of Washington): "Calling Bullshit"

Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West from University of Washington have developed an important and interesting course called Calling Bullshit. It isn't yet part of a course catalog, but they have assembled a great selection of reading, and hopefully it will be an "official" offering soon.

As they write: "We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combatting it with effective analysis and argument."

(Tip of the cap to the Bansal lab.)

Update: I have updated this blog entry (adding and slightly changing some text above) to make it clear that the course isn't literally being offered yet, but its material has been assembled, so go take a look at it!

Update (1/14/17): I wrote a blurb about this course for the Improbable Research blog.

"Everything is Fucked: The Syllabus"

Sanjay Srivastava (University of Oregon) put together a summary of the field of psychology called "Everything is Fucked: The Syllabus".

My favorite quote from his blog entry is the following one: "The format of this seminar is as follows: Each week we will read and discuss 1-2 papers that raise the question of whether something is fucked." Amidst the topics of all of the other weeks, I am highly amused by the title of week 7: "Interlude: Everything is fine, calm the fuck down".

Of course, there is also the serious side to this about the enormous amount of messiness in basically every step in fields like psychology (and of course there are significant complications in scientific practice more generally).

I know I would be interested in taking this course! Would you?

(Tip of the cap to the Improbable Research blog.)

My Undergraduate Lecture Course on Networks

My lecture course on networks makes its debut as an undergraduate course in our new term (Hilary Term 2014).

I have some more information to include, but I am going to try to ignore such things for another week or so, but I have included a hyperlink to the official course synopsis. Normally, I would use a title like "Useful Links" for relevant websites, but for this course it's going to have to be "Useful Out-Edges". That's just the way it is.

By the way, I previously taught this module as an ad hoc course (2 years ago) and also for Masters students (last year). This term marks its debut as part of the undergraduate curriculum. 38 students are enrolled in my course, which is quite a strong debut (most debut courses only have a handful of students). I'll try not to ruin their lives.

Headline: Oxford's IT Learning Programme Seeks to "Create More Pleasurable 'User Experiences' "

Let me quote directly from the beginning of an e-mail from Oxford's IT Learning Programme that advertises one of their upcoming courses:

"The need to (...) create more pleasurable 'user experiences' when designing technology has become increasingly apparent in recent years."

What on earth are they teaching at this university???