STATS 48N: Riding the Data Wave
Imagine collecting a bit of your saliva and sending it in to one of the personalized genomics company: for very little money you will get back information about hundreds of thousands of variable sites in your genome. Records of exposure to a variety of chemicals in the areas you have lived are only a few clicks away on the web; as are thousands of studies and informal reports on the effects of different diets, to which you can compare your own. What does this all mean for you? Never before in history humans have recorded so much information about themselves and the world that surrounds them. Nor has this data been so readily available to the lay person. Expression as "data deluge'' are used to describe such wealth as well as the loss of proper bearings that it often generates. How to summarize all this information in a useful way? How to boil down millions of numbers to just a meaningful few? How to convey the gist of the story in a picture without misleading oversimplifications? To answer these questions we need to consider the use of the data, appreciate the diversity that they represent, and understand how people instinctively interpret numbers and pictures. During each week, we will consider a different data set to be summarized with a different goal. We will review analysis of similar problems carried out in the past and explore if and how the same tools can be useful today. We will pay attention to contemporary media (newspapers, blogs, etc.) to identify settings similar to the ones we are examining and critique the displays and summaries there documented. Taking an experimental approach, we will evaluate the effectiveness of different data summaries in conveying the desired information by testing them on subsets of the enrolled students.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-AQR, WAY-FR
Instructors:
Sabatti, C. (PI)
;
Miao, J. (TA)
STRAMGT 110Q: Making Sense of Strategy
Get the strategy right, and the chance for success is great. Nowhere is this more evident than in today's world of major challenges. Strategy is at the heart of problem solving and achieving objectives, yet few people can define strategy, much less understand how to conceptualize, design, and execute effective strategies that yield the best outcomes. This course will meet once a week to focus on interesting and engaging case studies, each of which illustrates a key ingredient of strategy. Some are well-known historical events, while others are less obvious, but all have a strategic lesson to share. They are quite diverse, from the planning of a high-risk rescue in the Colorado Rockies, to a product crisis in a Fortune 50 company, to a little-known failed military mission of WWII, to a commercial airline disaster. The ability to think through challenging and varied scenarios is both instructive and mind-stretching. There will be some pre-reading on each case study and there may be a field trip for students to put their lessons into practice. The course is designed to be highly interactive; all to enable students to unravel the mystery and power of strategic thinking. Students will also have the opportunity to select and analyze a case reflecting interests of their own. This course can help students not only prepare for a career in a range of fields, but also as they meet the challenges of their current coursework. Problem-solving skills are central in every walk of life; this seminar can help students build a stronger foundation for sound decision-making.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Demarest, D. (PI)
SURG 70Q: Surgical Anatomy of the Hand: From Rodin to Reconstruction
The surgical anatomy of the hand is extremely complex in terms of structure and function. Exploration of the anatomy of the hand in different contexts: its representation in art forms, the historical development of the study of hand anatomy, current operative techniques for reconstruction, advances in tissue engineering, and the future of hand transplantation.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Chang, J. (PI)
SURG 72Q: Anatomy in Society
Preference to sophomores. The influence of human anatomy on the design of commercial products and performance (such as headphone and ear bud design, automobile interior design, table music performance and handicap devices design). How societal advancements have evolved to increasingly accommodate human form and function. Guest speakers are experts in the fields of audiology, design and music. Exposure to human anatomy via cadaver material, 3D digital images, the 3D dissection table and models.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
Instructors:
Fogel, B. (PI)
;
Srivastava, S. (PI)
TAPS 11N: Dramatic Tensions: Theater and the Marketplace
Preference to freshmen. The current state of the American theater and its artists. Conventional wisdom says that theater is a dying art, and a lost cause, especially in an age of multi-media entertainment. But there are more young playwrights, actors, and directors entering the field today than at any other time in American history. Focus is on the work of today's theater artists, with an emphasis on an emerging generation of playwrights. Students read a cross-section of plays from writers currently working in the US and UK, covering a spectrum of subjects and styles from serious to comic, from the musical to the straight play. Hits and misses from recent seasons of the New York and London stages and some of the differences of artistic taste across the Atlantic. Hands-on exploration of the arts and skills necessary to make a play succeed. Students develop their own areas of interest, in guided projects in design, direction or performance. Conversations with playwrights, designers ,and directors. Labs and master classes to solve problems posed in areas of creative production. Class meets literary managers and producers who are on the frontlines of underwriting new talent. Class trips include two plays at major Bay Area Stages.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Freed, A. (PI)
TAPS 11Q: Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q)
This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Participation in the trip is a requirement for taking part in the seminar (and vice versa). The trip is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and the SAI programming director. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. For further details and updates about the trip, see
http://arts.stanford.edu.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Phelan, P. (PI)
;
Lee, S. (TA)
TAPS 17N: Acting for Activists
Acting for Activists is designed for students who are interested in combining acting with activism, performance with politics. We will work with theatre that responds to specific political events and crisis such as hate crimes or war through the performance of activist texts. We will also explore works that challenge inequalities of income, race, gender and sexual orientation. By the end of the course students will cultivate a critical vocabulary for discussing and critiquing work within acting/activist contexts and develop new strategies for creating theatre in relation to issues they are passionate about. Acting for Activists encourages students to think about what they want to say and helps them craft how they want to say it.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
Instructors:
Hill, L. (PI)
;
Pipert, J. (TA)
TAPS 19N: Perform, Record, Create: American Theater in the Age of Video
From Electronovision, a clunky combination of television and film used to record Broadway shows in the sixties, to slick 360º videos of theater performances that Google Cultural Institute brings to your iPhone, video technologies have profoundly altered the ways in which we see and understand live performance. If video recording started as an effort to preserve live performances, it ended up transforming the way we make theater. In short, it went from documentation to creation. In this class, students will watch landmark recordings of theater performances, comment on them, and, following the historical trajectory of the encounter between these two media, create their own videos of live shows. No previous experience in video or theater is necessary.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
TAPS 20N: Prisons and Performance
Preference to Freshmen. This seminar starts with the unlikely question of what can the performing arts ¿ particularly dance and theater ¿ illuminate about the situation of mass incarceration in America. Part seminar, part immersive context building, students will read and view a cross-section of dance and theater works where the subject, performers, choreographers or authors, belong to part of the 2.4 million people currently behind bars in US prisons. Class includes conversations with formerly incarcerated youth, prison staff, juvenile justice lawyers and artists working in juvenile and adult prisons as well as those who are part of the 7.3 million people currently on parole or probation. Using performance as our lens we will investigate the unique kinds of understanding the arts make possible as well as the growing use of theater and dance to affect social change and personal transformation among prison inmates. Class trips will include visits to locked facilities and meetings with artists and inmates working behind bars.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Ross, J. (PI)
;
Narayan, V. (TA)
TAPS 21N: The Idea of Virtual Reality
What is virtual reality and where is it heading? Was there VR before digital technology? What is the value of the real in a virtual culture? How, where, and when do we draw the line between the virtual and the real, the live and the mediated today? Concentrating on three aspects of VR simulation, immersion, and interactivity this course will examine recent experiments alongside a long history of virtual performance, from Plato's Cave to contemporary CAVEs, from baroque theatre design to Oculus Rift.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Smith, M. (PI)
;
Narayan, V. (TA)
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