Ivo Dinov
UCLA Statistics, Neurology, LONI
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Statistics 19
Fall 2004
Order and Organization in the Stochastic Universe
A Fiat Lux Course
Course Description

Instructor:
Ivo D. Dinov, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Statistics,
Research Scientist, Department of Neurology,
UCLA School of Medicine
E-mail:

Lectures:  Wednesday, 12:00-12:50 PM, Rolfe Hall 3134

Instructor Office: Main: MS 8917 (alternative: CHS, UCLA School of Medicine, Reed 4-238, by appt. only)
Virtual Office Hours Forum
STAT Computer Lab: http://www.stat.ucla.edu/undergraduate/icl/
Grading policy and basis for Final Grade Course Description:
This multidisciplinary course will connect ideas from the fields of neuroscience, philosophy, physics, engineering, social sciences, biology, genetics, mathematical and statistical modeling. The marriage of determinism and chance can be found all around us and in each of these areas. We will discuss how we can model and introduce limited "order" in the seemingly chaotic Universe. Various principles will be discussed relating trade offs between quality vs. amount of information, statistical vs. practical significance, population vs. sample analysis, etc.

HW Assignment Policy:

Textbooks:
1. A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram (2002)
2. Chance in Biology: Using Probability to Explore Nature by Mark Denny and Steven Gaines (2000)
    Tentative schedule of topics to be covere
  1. The Nature of Chance
  2. Determinism versus Chance 
  3. Chaos vs. Order
  4. Experiments, Observations & Distributions
  5. Types & Causes of Variation
  6. Discrete & Continuous Patterns of Disorder
  7. The Normal Distribution
  8. Central Limit Theory
  9. Randomness in Biology, Genetics, Engineering & Physics
  10. Random Walks
  11. Duality Principles: The Uncertainty Principle (momentum vs. position)
  12. Balancing Quality and Volume of Information
  13. Statistical vs. Practical Significance
  14. Statistics of Extremes 
  15. Intra- vs. Extra-polation
  16. Noise and Perception
  17. Bayesian Theory
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