Play-Doh and Game Theory: My 22W Class Schedule!
As is tradition for every term, I like to introduce the classes I'll be taking so that you can get a better idea of what courses are available at Dartmouth! Although it's only been a few weeks, I've already learned a lot in each of my classes, which is why I thought it'd be a great time to share.
The first class I'm taking is Econ 35, which is Games and Economic Behavior. I took Econ 25 last term, which is in the same sequence as Econ 35. Therefore, I'm excited to build on what I did last term and continue to learn about game theory. The cool thing about this class is that we'll be coding a program to navigate game theory situations, and there will even be a tournament with all our programs! The winner of the tournament gets extra credit for the class, so I'm definitely hoping my program will be able to take advantage of any situation by identifying dominant strategies and nash equilibriums!
Next, I'm also taking Math 32, which is called Shape of Space. As someone who's never really enjoyed math, I took this class because I heard it has a different approach than other math classes. While most classes in math emphasize formulas and rigor, this one is more about intuition and creative thinking. The class has definitely lived up to my expectations, as we spend time in class cutting up paper Mobius strips and playing with play-doh. Here's a picture of my play-doh, which is not only in one of my favorite colors but also something our professor allowed us to take home!
Finally, my third class this term is QSS 20, also known as Modern Statistical Computing. It's a really code-heavy class, which has forced me to remember some of my CS1 knowledge from Freshman year. Although it was a struggle at first to get back into coding, I've since grown more and more comfortable. In fact, I'm really proud of completing our first problem set, which seemed like a really daunting task. With the help of several office hours with the Professor and Stack Overflow, I was able to get it done including this beautiful graph you see on the front of the blog post! As a way to combine computing and social sciences, our first problem set studied racial disparities in the criminal justice system. I'm looking forward to continuing to improve my coding skills, which I'll be using in both my Econ and QSS classes!
That's it for now! If you want to see how these classes evolve as the term continues, make sure you follow along the blog. Maybe I'll even be able to show you my game theory program in action!