English

This course provides an introduction to the basic ideas and context of both urban and regional planning. Key planning systems, policy agendas and perspectives are critically assessed. Examples are drawn mainly from rapidly changing regions in Asia. Challenges addressed include infrastructure, land policy, housing, poverty, governance dilemmas and environmental problems. Planning in regions and cities is viewed in light of wider social, political and economic trends as well as the geographical context. Planning is placed into perspective relative to other forces that influence development patterns.

This course provides an introduction to the field of quantum computing and information, covering a variety of topics ranging from computation and cryptography to foundations of quantum physics. It explores current research topics and discusses how quantum phenomena give rise to new algorithms for machine learning, quantum computational supremacy, cryptographic schemes with unprecedented security guarantees, and device-independent protocols. Topics include fundamentals of quantum computing; the circuit model; basic quantum algorithms and the concept of quantum computational supremacy; Bell inequalities, non-local games, and the concept of device-independence; and basic quantum protocols for cryptography. As part of the exercises, students run simple quantum programs on an actual quantum computer available through the cloud.

The course is an introduction to mathematical statistics, fundamental to econometrics and related areas.

This first-semester course introduces students to the history of literature in Scotland in English and Scots, covering two periods of its great flourishing: at the Stuart court of the late 14th and 15th centuries, and in the Romantic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The focus is on how questions of literary form relate to the social and intellectual context in which the text was written and read; that is, on how the text's formal achievement reflects the institutions which made it possible and the ideas which made it meaningful. The course encourages students to extend their essay writing skills through engagement with critical material.