Professional and Lifelong Learning

Course description

According to Galileo, "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe." In this course, we learn how to use the language of mathematics to model aspects of the world to seek insights that might otherwise be hidden. We model physical processes, human behavior, money and markets, and much else. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of all three major modeling tasks: simulation, prediction, and optimization. This project-based course addresses all aspects of the modeling process, with a focus on using basic mathematical tools to address sophisticated problems. We focus on translating questions into mathematical language, building models and extracting information from them, and interpreting the results of our calculations. We also look at the impact of models on equity and inclusion and the danger in applying incomplete models.