Quantitative Reasoning Foundation: In Search of Soulmate

Introduction

Introduction

Within our lifetime, there are limited opportunities to meet with limited number of people. When we also take into consideration of the limited intelligence of human being, it would not be difficult to understand that why people would regret on spending unnecessary time on unnecessary relationship, or missing out the chance to meet with the perfect lifetime partner.

Instead of putting our faith into intuition or fortune telling, if we treat the search of soulmate as a game of data collection and decision making, would quantitative reasoning provide us a better guidance in the search of friendship or romance?

The course is using human relationship as an example to demonstrate the usefulness of the skills of data collection, visualization and analysis in rational decision making as well as refuting false claims.

Organization

Organization

This module focuses on the application of quantitative reasoning on a psychology topic. Students will come across various studies about human love which involve quantitative reasoning skills and will experience the power of interdisciplinary studies. It will be pointed out that the methods involved could be a set of numerical and data analysis skills at undergraduate level. Students will apply the quantitative methods to investigate various arguments or theories that claim to be helpful in finding a perfect soulmate. The course would also be a journey to demonstrate that quantitative reasoning often plays important role in helping us to decide whether an argument should be accepted.

Besides weekly lectures, course activities would include: Group discussions on research method and data quality control, exercises on basic statistics, mid-term test and a group project presentation.

Some selected topics

  1. Overview: What are the common useful quantitative skills?
  2. Descriptive statistics
  3. Hidden orders in human psychology
  4. The optimal stopping theory and the Equation of marriage
  5. The math tricks behind dating apps

Assessments

Assessments

  1. Classroom participation 10%,
  2. Homework 30%,
  3. Test 20%
  4. Group project presentation 20%
  5. Project essay 20%

Reference Reading List

Reference Reading List

  1. Neil Weiss, 2013. Introductory Statistics, 9th Edition. Pearson (ISBN: 9781292022017)
  2. Hannah Fry, 2015. The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation. TED Books (ISBN: 978-1476784885)
  3. John J Shaughnessy, 2014. Research Methods in Psychology, 10th Edition. McGraw-Hill (ISBN: 978-0077825362)
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