A random walk is a simple thing that appears everywhere in the world. It can be used to describe animal movement, an internet user jumping between websites, the prices of financial instruments, the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards, and much more. Walk on over to this class to learn about the random walks from the perspective of mathematics, computer science, statistics, and more. Along the way, we will learn what the mathematician Shizuo Kakutani meant when he said that a confused person will make their way home, but a confused bird may be forever lost.

Billions of people worldwide use some form of social media, and each person's actions on social media provide data that may be studied. In this course, we will explore applications of data science on social media data. This field of study leverages massive datasets, powerful computers, and smart algorithms of the modern day to draw amazing insights from social media data.