3457 - Predicting the Future
Course Description
ONLINE: In this lecture-based course, we will look at how predicting has been done from the earliest times to the present day and the ways it infuses society today. We will examine how advances in science and technology have led to more accurate forecasting of weather and other natural phenomena, and how it is now commonplace to build models to make predictions in areas as disparate as advertising, elections and pandemics. We will also look at how art, music, language and other less obvious areas are being modeled using recent significant advances in artificial intelligence. We will examine the different ways predicting is done, and how these methods are used in all these fields. Students will learn how prediction is the basis of a large number of industries and, in fact, most human activities. Students will be better prepared to evaluate the reliability of "expert" predictions, and to understand how companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon use their data to predict their behavior. | Lecture + Q&A.
Max enrollment: 50.
Class sessions are recorded.