Applied Physics 214

RANDOMNESS
in the PHYSICAL WORLD

 

                  Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM,  McCullough 122

 

Instructors:    

Persi Diaconis (Statistics, Mathematics)

Susan Holmes (Statistics)

Aharon Kapitulnik (Applied Physics, Physics)

Stephen Shenker (Physics)

 

 

            Admin Staff: Cyndi Mata, McCullough Building, Room 339

                                    Phone: 723-0223;  E-MAIL:

 

Course content:

Notions of randomness play a central role in many areas of science.  In this

course we will explore some concepts that are fundamental in a number of disciplines.

 

Potential topics include:  random numbers, their generation and application;

disordered systems, quenching and annealing; percolation and fractal structures; universality, the renormalization group and limit theorems; path integrals, partition functions and Wiener measure; random matrices; and optimal estimation.

 

This course will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the sciences.

 

Format:

After an introduction in the first meeting, each of the instructors will give a series of lectures on selected topics (see above). At the end of each set there will be a panel discussion on the topics discussed in the lectures. Students participation is encouraged.

 

Assignments:

Students will have to prepare two papers related to topic discussed in class.

Look at the instructions.

 

Suggested Readings and Course Notes:

Use this link to see the suggested reading for the coming week. Notes and Slides of the class presentations can also be found here.