Courses tagged with "Interest and debt" (5)

In this course, we will look at the properties behind the basic concepts of probability and statistics and focus on applications of statistical knowledge.  We will learn how statistics and probability work together.  The subject of statistics involves the study of methods for collecting, summarizing, and interpreting data.  Statistics formalizes the process of making decisionsand this course is designed to help you cultivate statistic literacy so that you can use this knowledge to make better decisions.  Note that this course has applications in sciences, economics, computer science, finance, psychology, sociology, criminology, and many other fields. Every day, we read articles and reports in print or online.  After finishing this course, you should be comfortable asking yourself whether the articles make sense.  You will be able to extract information from the articles and display that information effectively.  You will also be able to understand the basics of how to draw statistical conclusions.

This course will introduce you to the major concepts of and debates surrounding industrial and organizational psychology. Industrial and organizational psychology is the application of psychological research and theory to human interaction (both with other humans and with human factors, or machines and computers) in the workplace. The phrase “industrial and organizational psychology” (sometimes referred to as “I/O”) may be somewhat misleading, as the field deals less with actual organizations and/or industries and more with the people in these areas. As mentioned above, “I/O” is an applied psychological science, which means that it takes research findings and theories that may have originally been used to explain a general phenomenon of human behavior and applies them to human behavior in a specific setting (here, the workplace). Consider, for example, the fact that many jobs require applicants to take a personality test. Psychologists originally developed this test to detect and diagnose abnorm…

This course introduces learners to the principles of learning and behavior by surveying relevant theoretical and empirical approaches within psychology.  The overall emphasis is on the theoretical foundations of psychology as they relate to human learning and behavior.   The following topics will be reviewed: historical perspectives of early learning theories, prevailing theories of human development, classical and operant conditioning, effects stimuli have on learning and behavior, social learning, motivation, cognitive developmental theory in the context of learning stages and processes, memory and human information processing models, and problem-solving methods.  Understanding these human processes is an integral part of psychology and other domains of human behavior, such as marketing, sports, health, education and relationships. Learning theories are an outgrowth from philosophies of thought.  The philosophical approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and the works of Plato and Descarte form the…

This course will introduce you to the psychology behind gender and sexuality, or the study of the different ways our gender roles and sexual identities impact our lives. Although the terms “gender” and “sex” are often used synonymously in everyday speech, this course will assign the terms two different meanings. “Sex” refers to biological differencei.e. whether you are a female or male from a biological standpoint. “Gender” refers to the social and psychological attributes that come along with one’s sex. Though these terms are similar and relate to one another, there is a distinct difference between the two that you should recognize for the purposes of this course. In this course, we will take a look at how our understanding of our own gender and sex can affect different aspects of our functioning, while also identifying the factors in our lives that can impact our gender and sex. While we often assume we know a lot about how gender affects our lives and the lives of the opposite gender, t…