Analytic Reasoning
In Dr. Panos Linos's Robot Programming course, students
learn how to write computer programs using a small personal robot
called "Scribbler," who can be programmed to detect light, avoid
obstacles, play songs, take photos, and even make movies.
"Most students understand the importance of computing," Linos
notes, "and realize that it is ubiquitous." The hands-on and
interactive nature of the course allows students to "learn by
watching their programs in action performed by their personal
robots."
In Dr. Karen Holmes's Win, Lose, or Draw, students play
games-literally. Building their understanding and skills of
critical analysis and reasoning, Holmes helps students see the
real-life ramifications of behaviors, based on their work in the
mathematics of probability. It is a course, Holmes notes,
that "has lasting effects on students," since they "get better at
logically thinking problems through by working logic puzzles,
including problems on graduate entrance exams for law or graduate
school." Plus, Holmes notes, once they complete the course,
"students can do sudokus for the rest of their lives."
This commitment to active student engagement is also evident
in Lacey Echol's Statistically Speaking, a course designed to help
students see "how prevalent statistics is in their world" and in
their major field of study. "Students work with real data
from Indiana Youth Institute (IYI)," a non-profit organization that
studies and works with young people in Indiana, Echols explains,
"Butler students perform statistical analysis with the variables of
interest from the organization and we hope that our analyses will
help them see issues and trends in our state."
Course Structure: A menu of three-hour courses
to be taken in the first or second year.
Learning Objectives:
- To develop capacities for quantitative and analytic
reasoning.
- To understand the centrality of these capacities to the natural
and social sciences.
- To recognize the applications of such capacities to matters of
personal and public life.
Some examples of Analytical Reasoning courses
currently being taught include:
Codes & Secret Messages
Codes & Secret Messages: How can sensitive information such as
credit card numbers or military strategy be exchanged between two
people without being intercepted by a third party? Are there ways
to detect and correct errors resulting from a mistyped
identification number or a scratched CD? Can information be
exchanged securely among multiple individuals without anyone
revealing his or her own decryption scheme? In this course,
students will investigate various strategies for storing and
transmitting information accurately, efficiently, and securely.
Students will design several types of ciphers for sending secret
messages, construct various error detecting and error-correcting
codes, and implement secure public-key cryptosystems for exchanging
messages with classmates. As these issues are explored, students
will discover the need for mathematical notions such as modular
arithmetic, permutations and combinations, probability and
statistics, vectors and matrices, and formal logic.
Win, Lose or Draw
Win, Lose or Draw: Why do we play games? Whatever the reason, games
are a big piece of life. The world has played games for a long,
long time- every time period, every culture. We will study games
and gambling in our culture as well as those in other cultures. To
better understand games, the students will study probability theory
and its application to gaming. Applications include casino games,
lotteries, racing, wagering systems, as well as other games. Some
analytical tools that will arise during the course are counting
methods, expected value, trees, gambler's ruin, and
distributions.
Robot Programming
This introductory programming course features personal robots that
can move, draw, and take digital pictures. Robot behaviors are
programmed and controlled remotely using a high-level language such
as Python from a desktop or laptop computer. Topics include
conditional execution, repetition, defining functions, and using
arrays.