Fall Numbers Sections

Morning Sections

(MWF 10:20-11:20am & 11:30am-12:30pm)

Bad Data, Misinterpretation, and Bullshit - POD

Joe Gantt, Director of Forensics and Instr of Rhetoric and Media Studies

Alyx Dickson, Asst Speech & Debate Coach

Evan Grisham, Asst Speech & Debate Coach

• Core 121-01 - MWF 10:20-11:20am (Gantt)
• Core 121-08 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm (Dickson) - {added 7/2}
• Core 121-10 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm (Grisham) - {added 7/16}

The average person is subjected to a staggering number of arguments on a daily basis. Marketing firms estimate that those claims number in the thousands or even tens of thousands. Yet, many of those claims are built upon unstable or deceitful foundations. In some cases, data are unreliable or invalid. In other cases, valid data are unintentionally misinterpreted or misunderstood. And finally, some arguments are intentionally designed to misrepresent data in order to deceive; colloquially, we can call those arguments bullshit.

This course will present an argumentative model to the claims we encounter. Students in the course will examine arguments from sports, politics, health, and economics among other subjects in learning both how to construct better quantitative arguments and to identify bullshit when they come across it.

Was the second sentence of this course description bullshit? That’s the type of claim we’ll examine in this course.

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The Census — {added 7/30}

EJ Carter, Research & Instruction Librarian, Watzek Library

• Core 121-03 - MWF 11:30am-12:30pm 

The act of counting people has been controversial for centuries. The census originally served the two chief functions of government, taxation and raising a military. But it also ignited bitter tensions over political representation, the sources of wealth and poverty, and the status of religious and ethnic minorities. In the United States the census has been at the center of some of our biggest disputes: the Three-Fifths clause; the regional jockeying for power that led to the Civil War; the subsequent debates over voting rights and citizenship; mass immigration starting in the 19th century (and its restriction in the 1920s); and the debates sparked by the Civil Rights Movement over identity and representation that continue today. The class will survey this history, but it will also impart practical skills: how to ask and answer research questions using census data, and how to work with the tools that offer access to it, from data.census.gov to ArcGIS. We will hold a regular series of workshops on using the statistical computing language R and its tidy census package.

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Economy By the Numbers — {added 8/14}

Xiang Li, Visiting Prof of Economics

• Core 121-02 - MWF 11:30am-12:30pm 

This course is about the numbers that tell the story of the economy - and how to make sense of them. We’ll look at the data behind headlines about economic growth, jobs, prices, interest rates, and the stock market, and learn what these numbers really measure. Along the way, you’ll explore where economic data comes from, how to work with it, and what it can (and can’t) tell us about current events. Using the R programming language, you’ll get hands-on experience collecting, organizing, visualizing, and interpreting real-world data. No prior economics or programming experience is required - just curiosity about how the economy works.

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MWF 1:50-2:50pm Sections

(Main time)

The Promise and Peril of Cryptocurrency

Mark Dahl, Director of Watzek Library

• Core 121-09 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Hailed as digital gold by some and derided as financial rat poison by others, cryptocurrency has fueled celebrity scandals, international crime, and regulatory battles over the past decade—all while consuming terawatts of power.

This course will examine whether cryptocurrency represents a positive social and economic innovation, a destabilizing and destructive force, or merely a passing fad. In the first weeks, students will explore the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and learn about emerging blockchain applications such as smart contracts, decentralized finance, and Web3. In later weeks, the course will delve into cryptocurrency’s societal impacts across a variety of topical areas, sharpening analytical skills through the use of quantitative datasets.

Key topics include the boom-and-bust ecosystem surrounding crypto, its qualities as a store of value and speculative asset, its cultural influence and socioeconomic implications, its uses in unstable economies, its connections to crime, its environmental impact, the challenges of regulation, and its future prospects. In addition to engaging with these topics through readings and discussions, students will develop skills in analyzing, presenting, and constructing data-driven arguments using technology tools in weekly lab sessions.

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Space Oddities: Weird Shapes and Higher Dimensions—{added 8/19}

Colin Ehr, Visiting Inst of Math & Director of SQR Center

• Core 121-11 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Growing up, we have a certain understanding of the world around us: we live in three dimensions, the Earth is round, and the universe is expanding. But this leads to some bigger questions: what if there was a fourth dimension? What if the universe itself was round in some way? And what the heck does “the universe is expanding” actually mean?

In this course, we will explore how mathematicians think about ideas like space, curvature, and dimensions. We will learn about seldom seen areas of math, such as topology, that are interesting and accessible to students. And we will look at how math can help us think about the world around us, even when there aren’t necessarily numbers involved.

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The Science of Meditation - {added 7/2}

Bruce Podobnik, Assoc Professor of Sociology

• Core 121-07 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

This course introduces students to meditation/mindfulness practices, as well as the growing body of research in fields such as neuroscience, psychology, sports studies, and the social sciences about the effects of meditation. Students will work together on a group project where data is gathered on the outcomes of simple daily mindfulness practices that approximately 30 undergraduate volunteers will engage in over a ten week period during the semester (on psychometric measures of things like self-reported anxiety rates, ability to focus attention, ability to carry out challenging tasks, etc). Statistical tests such as chi-square and t-tests will be used to measure these survey outcomes quantitatively. Students in the course will also write a research paper in which they examine the use of numeric/statistical/biometric data to assess some aspect of a meditation/mindfulness practice that they are interested in, as reported in the academic literature. Students will be assessed on their engagement in class discussions, their critical engagement with reading via daily quizzes, their work on the group survey project, their research paper, and the class presentations they will give at the end of the semester. By the end of the semester each student should have a stronger sense of the benefits and potential limitations of attempting to quantitatively evaluate the effects of meditation/mindfulness practices — as well as an improved ability to conduct a survey and examine survey data results, write formal research papers, and give public presentations.

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Sports and Data

Matt Scroggs, Asst Prof w/Term of International Affairs

• Core 121-05 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

In professional sports, the rise of analytics has been a topic of great interest as teams and individuals try to get an edge on their opponents. But what are sports analytics? And how are they used to better understand the sports that we follow? This course will provide an introduction to analytics as applied to three major U.S. sports: baseball, (American) football, and basketball.

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Hidden Vistas of Mathematics

Sweta Suryanarayan, Asst Prof w/Term of Mathematics

• Core 121-04 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

There is a secret world of mathematics only known to mathematicians and some people who really go out of their way to explore. In this world one sees topics which are significant, beautiful and completely different from what one sees in high school. There is plenty in the world that is easily accessible to all but stays hidden from many due to a predetermined structure by which math is introduced in an academic setting. The goal of this course is to enhance students mathematical thinking through some special fields of mathematics that they may have never seen before and that are NOT dependent on speedy computations using some formula. During the semester we will focus on exploring three hidden vistas of mathematics namely:

• Modular arithmetic and its application in cryptography
• Types of infinites
• Topology; Study of mathematical objects by treating them like play doh

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What Do Numbers Sound Like? An Exploration of Digital Sound and Music

Stephen Tufte, Assoc Prof of Physics

• Core 121-06 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

One of the primary ways that we receive information about the world around us is through our ears. Since the late 1800s we have been able to measure, record, and play back sound information using mechanical devices. In the last 50 years we have dramatically shifted the way that we do this. The vast majority of the sound information that currently barrages us is now digital.

This course will present the physical basis of sound (pressure waves in air) and will discuss how we can measure sound waves, with a strong focus on the modern approach of digitizing sound; in other words, turning sounds into numbers. We will learn how to use digital sound recorders along with powerful computer software to measure, store, transmit, and mathematically process this sound information into more meaningful forms.

By learning to analyze the sounds that surround us quantitatively, we can address a wide range of interesting and important questions. For example, what is high-fidelity and how is this affected by compression algorithms? Does vinyl sound better? What is a sound spectrum and how is it useful? How has the shift to digital music affected how music is recorded, distributed, and consumed? How are sounds used to scientifically investigate nature (e.g. seismology, echolocation, ultrasonic imaging, animal communication)?