How do we begin to understand systems--political, economic, biological, social--whose complexity is beyond the limits of human comprehension? Standard academic assumptions fail for complex systems, resulting in inaccurate predictions and an underestimation of the probabilities of extreme events, such as the 2008 financial crisis. Nonetheless, these false assumptions are often used, due to the human tendency to prefer a pretense of knowledge to a knowledge of uncertainty. This class will teach you how to approach understanding systems with many interacting components, using a rigorous framework that combines concepts from information theory and physics. Topics include the basic principles of complex systems science and their applications to hierarchies, economic crashes, ethnic violence, the evolution of altruism, urban planning, and pandemics.

Learn the fundamentals of rocket propulsion with the MIT Rocket Team. We will talk though the engineering considerations behind large space-launch vehicles, and also go over a few principles relevant to model rocketry.

Learn how nuclear explosives function, and how to design a nuclear strike on various targets. Watch cool videos of stuff blowing up! Also, we'll talk about some proposed-but-never-built "off-label" uses of nuclear explosives, such as canal digging and nuclear-bomb launched spacecraft.

Computer Vision is the science of making robots and machines see! It's used to help robots or self-driving cars navigate, to recognize faces, to make cell phones read QR codes, to inspect products, in medical imaging, and much more. We'll do a hands-on intro to some basic techniques (edge detection, line and circle detection, filters) and then move on a more general discussion of advanced techniques.