HPS203H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Mathematical Finance, Slot Machine, Big Data
30 Nov 2017
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Institute for the history and philosophy of science and technology (ihpst) An individual"s swiftness of reaction to a stimulus varies from time to time. The outcome of a slot machine is devoid of pattern. Countless irregular occurrences defy prediction, control, or even explanation. How to make sense of uncertainty has not only posed one of the most significant intellectual challenges in the history of science, but also brought profound impacts on our lives. In this course, we introduce some major attempts to understand uncertainty and their broader implications to society and culture. The progress of science since the seventeenth century nurtured the confidence that all events in the universe were fully determined by natural laws. Yet, natural philosophers during enlightenment became aware of the limitation of human capacity in comprehending the details of many of such events, and thus began to develop a mathematical theory of probability to grapple with them.
