Wednesday, July 31, 2013

a particular MOOC that's been coming up in my feeds.

i'm curious to see how this particular course on mathematical philosophy unfolds. at first glance it reads like a discrete mathematics course that i took for a computer science major* but with more "relevant" and "edgy" material ..
such as the mοnty hall problem and ) arrow's voting paradox (also called an "impossibility theorem").**

another interesting aspect is the topics in game theory, such as the von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms.
looking through the syllabus, i would rather call this a "mathematics literacy" course. the title of 'mathematical philosophy' suggests it as part of philosophy of mathematics, from whose recurrent themes strikes me as a wholly different thing!


* not that i ever completed the major. it was my final semester for my undergraduate degree, i had a 3-credit course left called "operating systems," but by all accounts i would have had to spend 20 hours per week, just coding. i decided to take a topics in ΡDEs course which, in the long run, was a wiser and more useful choice. (-:

** it's funny how we become aware of certain facts. i actually learned of the latter result from an acquaintance, while couchsurfing .. about 9 years ago? similarly, the vNM axioms came up when one of my students from a proofs class wanted to write his term paper on economics and game theory.

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