One of the world's premier academic and research institutions, the University of Chicago has driven new ways of thinking since our 1890 founding. Today, UChicago is an intellectual destination that draws inspired scholars to our Hyde Park and international campuses, keeping UChicago at the nexus of ideas that challenge and change the world.
A follow-on to Intro to QC for Everyone 1, this course delves deeper into the mathematical basis for quantum computing and the programming that makes it a reality. Students will be taught all of the mathematical concepts they need to know, build up confidence and experience with individual and small groups of operations, then learn a sequence of important algorithms.
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreeThis class provides a series of Python programming exercises intended to explore the use of numerical modeling in the Earth system and climate sciences.The scientific background for these models is presented in a companion class, Global Warming I: The Science and Modeling of Climate Change.This class assumes that you are new to Python programming (and this is indeed a great way to learn Python!), but that you will be able to pick up an elementary knowledge of Python syntax from another class or from on-line tutorials.
This quantum computing course explores the basic design principles of today's quantum computer systems. In this course, students will learn to work with the IBM Qiskit software tools to write simple programs in Python and execute them on cloud-accessible quantum hardware. Topics covered in this course include:Introduction to systems research in quantum computingFundamental rules in quantum computing, Bloch Sphere, Feynman Path SumSequential and parallel execution of quantum gates, EPR pair, no-cloning theorem, quantum teleportationMedium-size algorithms for NISQ (near-term intermediate scale quantum) computersQuantum processor microarchitecture: classical and quantum controlQuantum program compilation and qubit memory managementKeywords: quantum computing, computer science, linear algebra, compiler, circuit optimization, python, qiskit, quantum algorithms, quantum technology, superposition, entanglement, qubit technology, superconducting qubit, transmon qubit, ion-trap qubit, photonic qubit, real quantum computers
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreePLEASE NOTE: Sales Strategies: Mastering the Selling Process course will close for new learner enrollment after January 15th. If you are interested in earning a Course Certificate for this course, please upgrade or apply for Financial Aid by January 14th, if you have not already done so. In order to earn a Course Certificate, you will need to complete all graded assignments, including peer reviews, by June 4, 2018. After that point, no new assignment submissions will be accepted for Certificate credit.Selling is a life skill. As people, we interact with other people every day in many different types of situations. And if you stop and think about those various situations, many of them are sales situations. You might be interviewing for a job, or meeting a new potential customer, or trying to convince someone that your idea is the right one. These are sales situations, and in this course you will learn how high-performing salespeople use critical skills and disciplines to create success each and every time they interact with another person. You will learn how to acquire and delight customers, use selling skills in different contexts, tell powerful stories, manage the entrepreneurial selling process, and use the key tools required for success in building your company, your career and your life. This course is designed as an adventure of discovery. You will be tested, taught and transformed through a series of lectures, readings and real-world exercises that are designed to push you up and out of your comfort zone. We will explore both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) selling and entrepreneurship issues and concepts. You will explore frameworks that define and clarify the knowledge, skill and discipline to be successful in selling. Your assignments will include a barter exercise, quizzes, and the creation of Craig Wortmann's practical and robust Sales Toolkit that consists of these ten tools:1) A filtered target list2) Your Sales Trailer℠3) The Art of the Sales Conversation4) A prospecting script5) An introductory email6) A Qualification Questions Checklist7) A list of Impact Questions8) An Objections and Responses Checklist9) A Proposal 10) Your Story Matrix℠My goal with this course is that no matter what your current level of ability, we help you build your Sales Toolkit and master the selling skills and disciplines that will change your life!
This course explores the basic design principles of today's quantum computer systems. In this course, students will learn to work with the IBM QisKit software tools to write simple quantum programs and execute them on cloud-accessible quantum hardware.Textbook:Quantum Computer Systems (QCS). Ding and Chong. (Link) Topics covered in this course include:Introduction to systems research in quantum computingFundamental rules in quantum computing, Bloch Sphere, Feynmann Path SumSequential and parallel execution of gates, EPR pair, No-cloning, teleportationMedium-size algorithms for NISQ computersMicroarchitecture: classical and quantum controlProgram compilation and memory management
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreeAre you curious about quantitative academic finance? Have you considered graduate study in finance? Are you working in an investment bank, money-management firm or hedge fund and you want to understand models better? Would you like to know what buzzwords like beta, risk premium, risk-neutral price, arbitrage, equity premium, and discount factor mean? This class is for you. We will see how one basic idea, price equals expected discounted payoff, unites everything - models that describe stocks, bonds, options, real investments, discrete time, continuous time, asset pricing, portfolio theory, and so forth. In this part I, we’ll quickly learn or review time-series in continuous and discrete time. We'll look at some basic facts. Then we’ll start with the underlying consumption-based model, and we’ll preview some classic issues in finance. That outlines the big ideas of the whole class. Then, we'll take a step back and study contingent claims and the theorems showing the existence of a discount factor (the m in p=E(mx)). We'll explore the mean-variance frontier and expected return vs. beta models and factor structures. We will study the classic linear models — CAPM, APT, ICAPM. We will learn how to use GMM to estimate and evaluate asset pricing models, as well as the classic regression tests. This paves the way for Part 2 which focuses on applications and empirical evaluation. The math in real, academic, finance is not actually that hard. Understanding how to use the equations, and see what they really mean about the world... that's hard, and that's what I hope will be uniquely rewarding about this class.
Urban school reform in the United States is characterized by contentious, politicized debate. This course explores a set of critical issues in the education and educational reform space, with a focus on aspects of the field that have sparked controversy and polarized views. We will dig into these debates, situating them within the larger history of public education and school reform, and considering the viewpoints, the evidence, and translation of issues into educational policy. The class is designed with multiple student perspectives in mind with appropriate content and access points for policymakers , school leaders, teachers and parents or other concerned citizens. No background knowledge is required. We will consider three themes in this course:Federal Strategies in School Reform: How has the federal government legislated and incented public school reform? What are the implications of those approaches given the nature of local control in American public education? We will discuss three particular strategies the federal government has enacted recently and the diverging perspectives on them.School Choice: How does school choice aim to improve schools? What forms does it take? Does providing school choice improve schools?Accountability: What is the history of accountability in American public schooling? What are the policies and practices associated with accountability and what are the assumptions behind them? Does accountability lead to improved outcomes for students?
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreeUrban school reform in the United States is characterized by contentious, politicized debate. This course explores a set of critical issues in the education and educational reform space, with a focus on aspects of the field that have sparked controversy and polarized views. We will dig into these debates, situating them within the larger history of public education and school reform, and considering the viewpoints, the evidence, and translation of issues into educational policy. We will consider three broad topics in this course:1.Federal Strategies in School Reform: How has the federal government legislated and incented public school reform? 2.School Choice: How does school choice aim to improve schools? 3.Accountability: What is the history of accountability in American public schooling? What are the policies and practices associated with accountability? Learning GoalsThis course will enable participants to:1. develop an informed historical perspective about public schooling in the United States;2. understand the unique contextual elements of the American approach to public schooling;3. analyze and assess divergent viewpoints about American public school history and school reform policy.Teachers may be able to receive continuing education credit for successful completion of this course. To earn continuing education credits students must purchase and earn the Course Certificate, which they can then submit to the credit-issuing agency in their state.Students should also fill out the requisite paperwork stating that the affiliated provider is the Graham School at the University of Chicago, and that average time for certificate-level course completion is 18 hours. Students outside of Illinois should contact their state’s accreditation board to determine whether this course is eligible for continuing education credit. Note that it is up to the schools or districts that employ teachers to decide whether this course meet their requirements.
This program serves as an introduction to quantum computing by teaching learners the foundations. It helps them develop an intuitive understanding of the physics that underlie quantum computation, the basics of the mathematical operations, and the rudiments of programming quantum computers. The program has as prerequisites only algebra and programming.The first course focuses on the basics of using one- and two-quantum bit (qubit) operations to solve problems. In the second course, learners take a deeper dive into quantum programming and further explore how to use quantum programming languages to implement quantum algorithms.
Quantum computing is coming closer to reality, with 80+ bit machines in active use. This course provides an intuitive introduction to the impacts, underlying phenomenon, and programming principles that underlie quantum computing. The course begins with an exploration of classes of computational problems that classical computers are not well-suited to solve. We then progress to an intuitive introduction to key QIS concepts that underlie quantum computing. Next, we introduce individual quantum operations, but with a symbolic representation and mathematical representation. A limited set of linear algebra operations will be taught so that students can calculate operation results. Finally, we string these individual operations together to create the first algorithm that illustrates the performance advantage resulting from these unique operations.
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreeThis course gives you a comprehensive introduction to both the theory and practice of machine learning. You will learn to use Python along with industry-standard libraries and tools, including Pandas, Scikit-learn, and Tensorflow, to ingest, explore, and prepare data for modeling and then train and evaluate models using a wide variety of techniques. Those techniques include linear regression with ordinary least squares, logistic regression, support vector machines, decision trees and ensembles, clustering, principal component analysis, hidden Markov models, and deep learning.A key feature of this course is that you not only learn how to apply these techniques, you also learn the conceptual basis underlying them so that you understand how they work, why you are doing what you are doing, and what your results mean. The course also features real-world datasets, drawn primarily from the realm of public policy. It is based on an introductory machine learning course offered to graduate students at the University of Chicago and will serve as a strong foundation for deeper and more specialized study.
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreeLearn how the nervous system produces behavior, how we use our brain every day, and how neuroscience can explain the common problems afflicting people today. We will study functional human neuroanatomy and neuronal communication, and then use this information to understand how we perceive the outside world, move our bodies voluntarily, stay alive, and play well with others.
In 1998, theoretical cosmologist Michael Turner coined the term “dark energy.” Since then, he has worked to combine cosmology and particle physics to understand the origin and evolution of the universe.
This course is designed for elementary and middle-school teachers or parents with no assumption of prior background in either coding or the Scratch programming environment. The course has three main goals: Teach Scratch, teach pedagogical approaches to teaching coding with Scratch, and get teachers intimately familiar with the curriculum Scratch Encore. During this course, participants will transition between learning Scratch as a learner, going through the Scratch Encore curriculum. This curriculum begins with elementary concepts such as the Scratch development environment, sequence, events, and basic loops. It then moves to intermediate topics that allow programmers to coordinate more complicated actions (intermediate loops and synchronization).At the same time, we provide explicit instruction on how to run a classroom using Scratch (e.g. entering your students into your classrooms, setting up studios, and grading assignments) as well as pedagogical approaches to teaching Scratch.By the end of the course, participants should be able to confidently teach Scratch using either Scratch Encore or a different curriculum, or to work on independent projects with their students or children.
Class Central TipsLearn How to Sign up to Coursera courses for free1600+ Coursera Courses That Are Still Completely FreeThis seven-week course will explore the relationship between law and technology with a strong focus on the law of the United States with some comparisons to laws around the world, especially in Europe. Tech progress is an important source of economic growth and raises broader questions about the human condition, including how culture evolves and who controls that evolution. Technology also matters in countless other ways as it often establishes the framework in which governments interact with their citizens, both in allowing speech and blocking it and in establishing exactly what the boundaries are between private life and the government.And technology itself is powerfully shaped by the laws that apply in areas as diverse as copyright, antitrust, patents, privacy, speech law and the regulation of networks. The course will explore seven topics: 1.Microsoft: The Desktop vs. The Internet. We will start with a look at the technology path that led to the first personal computer in early 1975, the Altair 8800. That path starts with the vacuum tube, moves to transistors, then to integrated circuits and finally to the microprocessor. We will look at the early days of software on the personal computer and the competition between selling software and open-source approaches as well as the problem of software piracy. We will discus the public good nature of software. The 1981 launch of the IBM PC revolutionized the personal computer market and started the path to Microsoft's powerful position and eventual monopoly in that market with the selection of MS-DOS. We then turn to four antitrust cases against Microsoft: (1) the 1994 U.S. case relating to MS-DOS licensing practices; (2) the U.S. antitrust middleware case over Microsoft’s response to Netscape Navigator; (3) the European Union case regarding Windows Media Player; and (4) the EU browser case over Internet Explorer. These disputes arose at the point of maximal competition between the free-standing personal computer and the Internet world that would come after it and we may know enough now to assess how these cases influenced that competition. 2.Google Emerges (and the World Responds). Google has emerged as one of the dominant platforms of the Internet era and that has led to corresponding scrutiny by regulators throughout the world. Decisions that Google makes about its algorithm can be life altering. Individuals are finding it more difficult to put away past mistakes, as Google never forgets, and businesses can find that their sales plummet if Google moves them from the first page of search results to a later page. With great power comes scrutiny and we will look at how government regulators have evaluated how Google has exercised its power. Both the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union have undertaken substantial investigations of Google’s practices and we will look at both of those. 3.Smartphones. The Internet started on the desktop but the Internet is increasingly mobile and people are seemingly tethered to their smartphones and tablets. And we have seen an interesting shift in that market away from Nokia handsets and the Blackberry to Apple's iPhone and its iOS platform and to the Android platform. The legal infrastructure of smartphones and tablets is extraordinarily complex. We will start by looking at U.S. spectrum policy and the effort to free up 500 megahertz of spectrum. We will look at the activities of standard setting organizations, including the IEEE and the creation of the 802.11 standard and Wi-Fi (or, if you prefer, wifi), the creation of patent pools and the regulation of standard essential patents. We will look at the FTC action against Google/Motorola Mobility and Apple's lawsuit against Samsung over utility and design patents relating to the iPhone. Finally, we will take a brief look at the European Commission's investigation into the Android platform. 4.Nondiscrimination and Network Neutrality. Facebook has more than 1 billion users and measure that against a world population of roughly 7 billion and a total number of Internet users of roughly 2.5 billion. A course on law and technology simply has to grapple with the basic framework for regulating the Internet and a key idea there is the notion of network neutrality. Nondiscrimination obligations are frequent in regulated network industries, but at the same, discrimination can be an important tool of design for communication networks. We will start our look at the Internet by looking at the great first communications network of the United States, the post office and will look in particular at the Post Office Act of 1845. We will then move to modern times and will consider efforts by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to produce sensible and sustainable nondiscrimination conditions for the Internet and will touch briefly on comparisons from around the world. 5.The Day the Music Died? In many ways, the Internet came first to music with the rise of peer-to-peer (p2p) music sharing through Napster and its successors. We start with a look into music platform history and the devices that brought recorded music into the home: the phonograph and the player piano. We turn to radio and the legal regime that puts music on the airwaves, the performing rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI. We look at the antitrust issues associated with the blanket license. We consider a failed music platform, digital audio tape, and the complicated legal regime associated with it, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. We will consider the copyright issues raised by the creation and distribution of music and the litigation over the p2p technologies such as Napster and Grokster. The music industry responded to p2p technology by adding digital rights management tools to CDs. As music distribution switched from physical media to digital distribution, we entered the world of Apple and the iPod and iTunes. We consider the DRM issues associated with Apple's music platform as seen by Steve Jobs. We conclude by looking at emerging subscription services like Spotify and the service that Apple is building based on its purchase of Beats. 6.Video: Listening and Watching. Images are some of the most powerful ways in which ideas and speech are communicated and video has long been regulated by the state. That starts as a communications law issue with government regulation of the radio spectrum, but also leads to the design of the television system with the assignment of channels and eventually the definition of digital television. And with the emergence first of cable TV and subsequently the VCR critical copyright roadblocks had to be overcome for new distribution technologies to emerge. We will consider the legal engineering that led to the DVD platform, which was an exercise in patent pools and trademark creation. We will sort through the creation of the digital TV platform and will also look at the copyright underpinnings for Netflix. And we will consider the question of technology neutrality in the content of the copyright fight over a new video distribution entrant, Aereo. Finally, we close the week with a brief look at the incentive spectrum auctions and the possible end of broadcast television. 7.The Mediated Book. Gutenberg revolutionized books with his printing press and for academics, books are sacred objects. But the printed book is on the run and with the rise of the ebook, we are entering a new era, the era of the mediated book. This is more than just a change in technology. We will look at the issues created by the rise of the ebook, issues about control over content and licensing and of the privacy of thought itself. We will also look at the legal skirmishes over this space, including the copyright fair use litigation over Google Books, the Apple e-book antitrust case. And we will look at the Amazon Kindle platform.