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Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will

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Free Online Course: Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will provided by Coursera is a comprehensive online course, which lasts for 2-3 hours a week. The course is taught in English and is free of charge. Upon completion of the course, you can receive an e-certificate from Coursera. Unpredictable? Randomness, Chance and Free Will is taught by Valerio Scarani.

NUS via Coursera
2-3 hours a week
Finished
Overview

  • This cross-disciplinary course deals with the undetermined, the unpredictable -- or what appears to be such. Among the questions that will be addressed are:

    • How is randomness defined?
    • How has randomness, often seen as a nuisance, become a useful resource for communication and computing? How is it generated?
    • How can physicists make the astounding claim that there is real randomness in nature?
    • Can our apparently free acts be predicted by monitoring the activity of the brain?

Syllabus

  • Lecture 1: Basic of randomness

    • History of randomness
    • The fair coin as ideal case
    • Definitions of randomness
    Lecture 2: Randomness as a resource
    • Review of various tasks in which randomness is used
    • Randomized algorithms and de-randomization
    • Cryptography: randomness for secrecy
    • Zero-knowledge proofs
    Lecture 3: Characterizing a source of randomness
    • The biased coin and other weaker sources of randomness
    • Amount of randomness: min-entropy
    • Extraction of randomness
    Lecture 4: Noise as a random number generator
    • Definition of "noise"
    • Thermal noise: example of a resistor
    • How to extract random numbers from thermal fluctuations
    Lecture 5: Deterministic chaos
    • Physical (in)determinism
    • Definition and examples of chaos
    Lecture 6: Quantum physics, a first encounter
    • Overview of quantum physics
    • Single-particle interferences (Mach-Zehnder, double slit)
    • Uncertainty
    Lecture 7: Intrinsic randomness and its practical uses
    • Bell's theorem and its implication
    • Elements of quantum information science
    Lecture 8: Introduction to free will in science
    • Measurement independence
    • Quanta in the brain?
    • Libet's experiments

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