Bits Homepage

QR48 Calendar

Harvard Quantitative Reasoning 48 and CSCI E-2

Spring Term, 2007

Podcasts RSS link for podcasts

Bits will be offered in two versions in the 2008-09 Academic Year:

In the fall through the Division of Continuing Education as

Blown to Bits: Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, with less math

and in the spring in both Harvard College and DCE as Bits

following a quantitatively oriented syllabus like the one below (from Spring 2007).

The book Blown to Bits, based generally on the course, will be published in June 2008

and is available for purchase now through Amazon.

Date		Lecture Topic	Homework	Readings
*Introduction*
W	Jan 31	The Koans of Bits
Information as Stuff
F	Feb 2	How big it is and what you can do with it depends on how it is represented (Ken Ledeen)
M	5	Lots of bits: Data representations, Moore's Law		Risks mount as stores mine a wealth of shopper data (Boston Globe, 2/4/07) U.S. Set to Begin a Vast Expansion of DNA Sampling (New York Times, 2/5/07) Course notes, Chapter 1
W	7	Probabilities and frequencies. Morse code as an example of data compression.
F	9	Predictability as an approximation to entropy. Shannon's game.
M	12	Shannon's source coding theorem: the entropy is the limit on compression.		Course notes, Chapter 2 Patrick seeks to limit background checks (Andrea Estes, Boston Globe, Feb. 12, 2007) Criminal records erased by courts live to tell tales (Adam Liptak, New York Times, Oct. 17, 2006)
W	14	Huffman codes	Problem Set 1 available	Course notes, Chapter 3
Privacy
F	16	Internet basics		Viewers Fast Forwarding Past Ads? Not Always (Louise Story, New York Times, February 16, 2007)
M	19	President's Day Holiday
W	21	Searching		Congestion pricing in London (FT, Feb 19) Eli Lilly Recovers Confidential Documents But Loses Secrets To The Web (Information Week, Feb 15)
F	23	Guest: Computer forensics expert Simson Garfinkel	Problem Set 1 due
M	26	Technology of encryption	Problem Set 2 available	Course Notes, Chapter 4 ; The Code Book, pp. 261-266 (modular arithmetic and Diffie-Hellman)
W	28	Regulation of encryption
F	Mar 2	Perfect bits: Analog and digital, error-correcting codes, fingerprinting, Shannon's Channel Coding Theorem		Course notes, Chapter 5
M	5	Guest: Electronic voting expert Ben Adida [Add/Drop Deadline]	Problem Set 2 due
W	7	Midterm Examination
Communication
F	9	Channels, Circuits, Networks	Project proposal available
M	12	Internet: Packet switching, Internet Protocol		Course notes, Chapter 6 Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (Carolyn Johnson, Boston Globe, March 12, 2007)
W	14	Protocols and standards		History, Digitized and Abridged (Katie Hafner, New York Times, March 11, 2007)
F	16	Control of Speech on the Internet
M	19	Guest: Craig Silverstein , AB'94, Google's Chief Technology Officer and employee #1	Problem Set 3 [pdf] available (also in .doc format)	Course notes, Chapter 7 Make Way for Copyright Chaos (Lawrence Lessig, New York Times, March 18, 2007)
W	21	Analog via digital: sampling and the Nyquist Criterion
F	23	Guest: Larry Denenberg, Chief Technology Officer of Oxy Systems, on Music, Pictures, and Video	Project proposal due	Course notes, Chapter 8 Court Rejects Law Limiting Online Pornography (New York Times, March 23, 2007)
M	26	Spring Break
W	28
F	30
M	Apr 2	Tour of Harvard's Network Operations Center, where about 200 terabytes go into and out of Harvard every day.		Interview with Jay Tumas, who oversees Harvard's NOC
W	4	Analog and digital in the physical world		Some see scans for lunch as taste of Big Brother (Maria Sacchetti, Boston Globe, April 4, 2007)
F	6	Guest: Katherine Albrecht, author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move
M	9	Power and channel capacity. Shannon-Hartley Theorem. Why binary is best	Problem Set 3 due
W	11	Wireless Electromagnetic Communication

F	13	Guest: Information legal scholar Jonathan Zittrain	Final project proposal due	The Generative Internet, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 1974 (2006)
M	16	Guest: Intellectual property lawyer Marshall Lerner	Problem Set 4 available	Lecture outline
W	18	Publishing and Creative Commons
F	20	History of broadcast regulation
M	23	Guest: Economics author David Warsh, author of Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations
W	25	Spread spectrum technology: Is the spectrum really a limited resource?	Problem Set 4 due Short paper assignment available	Silicon Valley Moneymen Make a Play for Airwaves (New York Times, April 9, 2007)
F	27	Guest: Cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan
M	30	Privacy and identity theft
W	May 2	Guest: Mark Hempstead: Ubiquitous Computing
F	4	Reprise	Short paper due
M	7	Reading Period		Reading Period Assignment: The Code Book, by Simon Singh
W	9
F	11
M	14		Projects Due, 2:00 PM
W	16	Last Day of Reading Period
Su	20	Review Session, 7-9PM, Science Center 309
W	23	QR48 Final Exam, 2:15PM, Maxwell Dworkin G115 2005 Final Exam 2006 Final Examination and Solution to 2006 Final Examination Study Guide (requires Freemind software) PDF of Study Guide Note for Firefox Users of Freemind: Firefox has trouble with .mm files. The workaround is: 1) Right click on the link on the QR48 home page 2) Choose "save link as" and save it to your hard drive (desktop or some other folder) 3) Open it with Freemind.

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