A Short Course in Behavioral Economics

in Business, Economics, Online Courses | October 9th, 2008

Here’s a course for our his­tor­i­cal moment.…

Behav­ioral economics—“the study of how think­ing and emo­tions affect indi­vid­ual eco­nom­ic deci­sions and the behav­ior of markets”—is a rel­a­tive­ly new dis­ci­pline. This approach to eco­nom­ics, which mar­ries psy­chol­o­gy and eco­nom­ics and dis­cards the assump­tion that every eco­nom­ic actor is ratio­nal, was devel­oped part­ly by Richard Thaler, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Deci­sion Research at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness. Now, thanks to the Edge.org, you can fol­low a short class on the sub­ject. It’s taught by Thaler him­self and he’s joined by Har­vard econ­o­mist Send­hil Mul­lainathan and Nobel Lau­re­ate Daniel Kah­ne­man.

The course, deliv­ered in text and video, is being rolled out week­ly on the Edge web site in six install­ments. You can find Weeks 1 and 2 here and here. And you can check back for new install­ments here (scroll to the very bot­tom of the page.)

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The Living Camera in Rome

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | October 8th, 2008

Here’s a rather amaz­ing video (added to our YouTube playlist) that shows what hap­pens when an artist, who hap­pens to be autis­tic, takes a 45 minute heli­copter flight over Rome and then works to artis­ti­cal­ly repro­duce all that he sees. The human brain nev­er ceas­es to amaze:

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Joseph Stiglitz on Managing the Global Credit Crunch

in Current Affairs | October 7th, 2008

As part of our effort to pro­vide insight into the ongo­ing cred­it cri­sis, we present a talk just giv­en at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty by the Nobel Prize win­ning econ­o­mist, Joseph Stiglitz (iTunes — Rss Feed). The author of Glob­al­iza­tion and its Dis­con­tents uses the talk as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to out­line the events that con­tributed to the glob­al cred­it cri­sis, and the future reg­u­la­tions that could get us back on track. The talk runs a good hour, and it takes about 20–25 min­utes for Stiglitz to real­ly focus on the cred­it crunch, and about 45 min­utes before he starts dis­cussing tan­gi­ble solu­tions. Don’t expect any mag­ic bul­lets, any short term solu­tions that will get the cur­rent cri­sis under con­trol. It’s more prag­mat­ic long-term solu­tions that you’ll find here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Finan­cial Cri­sis Explained

Ten Days That Shook The Finan­cial World

This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies The Cred­it Cri­sis

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A Day in the Life of Air Traffic

in Random | October 6th, 2008

The Air­Traf­fic team presents a rather intrigu­ing visu­al­iza­tion of what glob­al air traf­fic looks like over a 24 hour peri­od. File this under Ran­dom. Here it goes:

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Live from Bombay

in Online Courses, Web/Tech | October 6th, 2008

Sev­er­al months back, we men­tioned how the Indi­an Insti­tutes of Tech­nology (oth­er­wise called the IITs) had launched a series of free tech­nol­o­gy cours­es on YouTube. You can find about 50 free cours­es here in total.

As a quick fol­low up, it’s also worth let­ting you know about a new series of cours­es being web­cast live (and in Eng­lish) from IIT Bom­bay (watch here). Accord­ing to the head of their Cen­tre for Dis­tance Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion Pro­gramme, you can watch the live trans­mis­sion of 35 cours­es. A sched­ule of fall cours­es can be found here. Please note that the times ref­er­enced here are in Indi­an Stan­dard Time, but you can use this time zone con­vert­er to make sure that you’re in sync.

For more free online cours­es, see our own meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

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A Brief History of Disbelief

in History, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | October 5th, 2008

Jonathan Miller’s Brief His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief is a BBC pro­duc­tion (2005) that offers tele­vi­sion’s first sus­tained look at the hid­den his­to­ry of athe­ism. The three-part doc­u­men­tary takes you from unbe­liev­ers with­in Ancient Greece, to the re-emer­gence of dis­be­lief in 15th and 16th cen­tu­ry Europe, through to the French Enlight­en­ment, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Amer­i­ca and the rise of Dar­win­ian thought. We’ve post­ed Part 1 below. You can watch Parts 2 and 3 here and here.

This video comes our way via onlinedocumentaries4u.com

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Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin Round #3

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 5th, 2008

Here’s SNL’s satire of last week’s wide­ly viewed vice pres­i­den­tial debate. Thanks to Tina Fey’s impres­sion of Palin, SNL’s rat­ing are up 40% over last year. Quite a boon for NBC.

You can get Rounds 1 and 2 here and here.

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Peter & Ben

in Film | October 4th, 2008

Now show­ing in the YouTube Screen­ing Room: “Peter and Ben is a touch­ing and quirky sto­ry of how two “black-sheep” form an unusu­al and endur­ing bond.” The 10-minute short film was named Best Doc­u­men­tary at the Aspen Shorts Fest 2008. It’s added to our YouTube playlist. Here it goes:

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The Global Challenges Facing The Next U.S. President

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 3rd, 2008

CNN recent­ly host­ed a con­ver­sa­tion with sev­er­al recent Sec­re­taries of State, and they all dis­cussed the major chal­lenges that Barack Oba­ma or John McCain will be fac­ing next year. This is no ordi­nary time, and it’s rare to find Hen­ry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, War­ren Christo­pher, Col­in Pow­ell, and James Bak­er all sit­ting on the same stage and offer­ing their advice. Below, we have post­ed the first seg­ment. You can watch the remain­ing parts here.

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UCLA on YouTube

in YouTube | October 2nd, 2008

Add anoth­er one to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 75 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

UCLA has brought their videos to YouTube, join­ing a grow­ing num­ber of oth­er well-respect­ed cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Com­pared to oth­er new­com­ers, the ini­tial set of videos (see the UCLA col­lec­tion here) is rea­son­ably strong, and I sus­pect that it will get more sub­stan­tive over time. Straight off the bat, I’d point you to a longer course that you can watch online. It’s called Life, Con­cepts & Issues, and the first video appears below.

While on the top­ic of YouTube, I want to men­tion that I’ve been work­ing at Stan­ford on a fun (and also free) media project that we’ll be rolling out next week. Stay tuned for more details.

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