Statistics 24, Section 1. CCN: 32923
Freshman Seminar: Probability, outside the textbook
(Fall 2016)
Selected student talk slides
Class 12: November 18: Student talks:
- Dhruv Kathuria:
Auction Theory: How Google chooses its ads.
- Matthew Dong:
The SONGS Effect: A Nuclear Energy Test Case.
-
Ajay Raj:
The Statistics of Sports Championship Odds (focusing on NFL, NBA).
- Kimberly Ko:
The friendship paradox.
- Khalil Sarwari:
Possibilities and Probabilities Regarding the Existence of Aliens.
- Amber Yeh:
Final Destination in Real Life.
- Andy Zhang:
The issue with confidence intervals.
no class November 25
Class 13: December 2: Student talks:
- Ali Setayesh:
Statistics in the Stock Market.
- Wenbo Huang:
Stats involved in NBA.
- Scott Lee:
The Game of Hog.
- William Wilson:
Why People Ignore Possibilities They Don't Like.
- Neil Giridharan:
Using Stochastic Population Models to Predict the Evolution of Bird Flu.
- George Papadopoulos:
(the weather portion of) The Signal and the Noise.
Class 14: December 9: Student talks:
- Yoon Hong: Statistics in Baseball and its Applications.
- Ray Pan: The Usage and Success Of Sabremetrics in Baseball.
- Ahaan Karha
Game theory in Poker.
- Sorjo Banerjee
Are you smarter than a television pundit? .
- Isabel Zou
Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions.
- Alan Rosenthal How the stock market crashed in 2008.
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Instructor: David Aldous
Class time: Friday 11:00-12:00, room 1011 Evans Hall.
Office Hours: Friday 9.30 - 10.30 in 443 Evans Hall.
Courses in mathematical probability teach you to do certain mathematical
calculations, but
are often far removed from broader questions about the the role of randomness
in the ``real world" of human affairs.
This Freshman Seminar course is aimed at students with wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, and is intended as an introduction
to such questions using minimal mathematics.
I will talk about topics such as
- Everyday perception of chance.
- What math says about the stock market
- Game theory: do your grandmothers, playing an online game, reach a Nash equilibrium?
- Coincidences, near-misses and 1-in-a-million chances
- How accurate are short and medium term predictions and risks in politics and economics?
- Were there unusually many candidates for the Republican Nomination in 2012 and 2016?
- Science fiction meets science: global catastrophic risks and the Fermi paradox.
- Psychology of probability: predictable irrationality.
- Risk to individuals: perception and reality.
This course is a lightweight version of a upper division course, and I will use material from that coures.
The next link goes to
all
the lectures from that course.
Text
There is no text, but to get into the spirit of the course I suggest you look at one
of the 100 books on my page
Reviews of non-technical books relating to Probability,
for instance
- Silver, Nate.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't.
Penguin Press, 2012.
- Senn, Stephen.
Dicing With Death.
Chance, risk and health.
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Bernstein, Peter L.
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.
Wiley, 1996.
- Brown, Aaron.
Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street.
Wiley, 2011.
- Poundstone, William.
Fortune's Formula.
Hill and Wang, 2005.
- Blastland, Michael and Spiegelhalter, David.
The Norm Chronicles: Stories and Numbers About Danger.
- Haggstrom, Olle.
Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity.
Oxford University Press, 2016.
- Tetlock, Philip E.
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?
Princeton University Press, 2007.
I have a copy of (almost all) of these books, which you may borrow.
Student responsibilities
The student's responsibility is to carry out a small project,
write it up and present it in class (10 minutes) during one of the final 3 Fridays
(November 4, 18 and December 2).
In choosing a project you are encouraged to pursue your own
interests.
Here are some suggestions for types of project.
1. A topic report.
Choose a topic from one the the books on the list
Reviews of non-technical books relating to Probability , or a book of your own choice. Best to seek
one
interesting idea to discuss; don't try to summarize a whole book.
2.
A project finding data to confirm
or refute some general idea in probability, or just some interesting statistical data.
We'll see examples as the course progresses..
Talk with me before seriously engaging any project.
Topics and activities from each class
Class 1: August 26: Topic: Everyday perception of chance.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
Class 2: September 2: Topic:
The Kelly criterion for favorable games: stock market investing for individuals.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
- Look at book Fortune's Formula by Poundstone.
- Look at book A Random Walk Down Wall Stret by Malkiel.
- Read about the efficient market hypothesis.
- Look for studies of how well individual investors in the stock market actually do.
Class 3: September 9: Topic:
Risk to Individuals: Perception and Reality.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
-
(Unrelated):
green great dragon
grammar project.
- Evidence for the ``moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial" claim.
- Look at the Fischhoff - Kadvany Risk: A Very Short Introduction book.
- Report, in the style of the Ropeik-Gray Risk book, on some particular risk.
- Take some risks that are currently in the news, see how well they fit the 13 psychological factors listed
in the Ropeik How Risky Is It, Really? book.
Class 4: September 16: Topic:
Coincidences, near misses and one-in-a-million chances.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
- Birthday coincidences in MLB and NFL.
- Coincidence in recent news.
- Simulation study of "near misses" in some game.
- Cal Day poster for "what really has a 1 in a million chance".
- Look at the books The Improbability Principle by David Hand or Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence by Joseph Mazur.
Class 5: September 23: Topic:
Predicting the future.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
- How accurate were past predictions of world population growth?
- Compare the "one generation ahead" consensus science fiction view with views from
politics and economics such as
Future Global Shocks by the OECD, or
Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds
by National Intelligence Council.
- How accurate were predictions from the 2008 edition of Dunnigan -- Bay
A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, 4th edition.
- Look at the 2011 Annual Global Risks report, and give a rough assessment of the subsequent economic effects of some of the
identified risks.
Or compare the risks identified in the 2011 report
with the extent of media coverage (at end-2010) of future global risks.
- The wild guesses in Predicting the future (1993) by Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno.
Class 6: September 30: Topic:
Psychology of probability: predictable irrationality.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
Relevant books are
Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow
Ariely Predictably Irrational
Nickerson Cognition and Chance. The psychology of probabilistic reasoning
Class 7: October 7: Topic:
Science fiction meets science.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
Interesting Wikipedia pages are
Fermi paradox
and
The Great Filter and
Near-Earth object
and
Technological singularity.
Interesting books are
- Webb, Stepher. If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ...
WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.
- Davies. Paul. The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence.
- Bostrom, Nick and Cirkovic, Milan. Global Catastrophic Risks.
- Ward, Peter Douglas and Brownlee, Donald. Rare Earth: why complex life is uncommon in the universe.
- Haggstrom, Olle. Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity.
- Brockman, John (Editor).
What Should We Be Worried About?: Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night.
And some interesting papers are
Extreme weather and resilience of the global food system (2015)
by the UK-US Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience, The Global Food Security programme, UK.
Preparing for Future Catastrophes.
International Risk Governance Council, Lausanne.
Class 8: October 14: Topic:
Game theory.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
Links
pogo.com -- Dice City Roller
Books.
- Fisher, Len. Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life.
- Prisner, Erich. Game Theory through examples.
Papers.
Introducing Nash equilibria via an online casual game which people actually play. Extended write-up of lecture.
Testing game theory in the field: Swedish LUPI lottery games by R. Ostling et al.
Class 9: October 21: Topic:
Gambling with unknown probabilities: sports and politics.
Link to STAT 157 lecture
Links
PredictIt.
On the wisdom of crowds (my experience).
RealClearPolitics.
Advanced Football Analytics.
Class 10: October 28: Topic: Bayes rule and other little probability examples.
Class 11: November 4: Topic: Miscellany and some slides from Luck.
no class November 11