University of Hong Kong

This course introduces the fundamental tools in probability and statistics for quantitatively assessing risk and emphasizes applications of these tools to actuarial science problems. Course topics include: probability (combinatorial analysis, algebra of sets, mathematical theory of probability, conditional probability, statistical independence, Bayes' rule); random variables and probability distributions (random variables, discrete and continuous distributions, joint and marginal distributions, conditional distribution, independence of random variables); mathematical expectation (expectation, mean and variance, moment generating function, covariance and correlation; special distributions (Bernoulli and binomial distributions, geometric and negative binomial distributions, Poisson distribution, hypergeometric distribution, exponential and gamma distributions, normal distribution, quantiles); transformation of random variables; functions of random variables; sampling distributions (sum of independent random variables, sampling distributions of mean and variance, law of large number, central limit theorem, Chi-square distribution, student's t-distribution, F distribution; and introduction of estimation (point estimation, bias and precision). Assessment: assignments and final exam.

The course introduces the discipline of criminology from a sociological perspective. The course investigates how and by whom crime and criminal behavior are interpreted, and pushes beyond the easy (but always insufficient) answers of common sense; introduces a sociological imagination about criminology - to learn how to think sociologically about the problem of crime; and looks at some of the essential knowledge about crime and criminal behavior. What distinguishes criminology from common sense understandings of crime and criminality? What is crime and how is it measured? How are perceptions and responses to crime inter-related? Crime is not a fixed and objective entity, but very much open to definition. The phenomena of crime and deviance have been seen, experienced, and defined differently in different historical periods, in different cultures, and in different political settings. This course puts crime in historical, cultural, and political contexts. Assessment: essay, group presentation, final exam.

This course examines the politics of contemporary Japan, and focuses particularly on political changes since 1993, including the new electoral system and party realignment. This course surveys the core political institutions of the postwar era, explore the interaction of political leaders, political parties, the bureaucracy and interest groups, with an emphasis on the outgoing transformation of the Japanese political system.

This course introduces basic writing skills and career opportunities in the field of financial journalism. It focuses on reading financial documents, understanding macroeconomic issues, interpreting statistics, reporting on companies, and covering competition in a global economy. Students report and write business stories. Students are required to read the South china Morning Post and The Wall Street Journal Asia every day during the semester. Assessment: assignments (40%), discussion (20%), presentation (20%), and a final exam (20%). Attendance is required.

The overall aim of the course is to understand how creativity works in practice in different business situations in the creative industries. Lectures and readings focus on different forms of cultural production – advertising, book publishing, ceramics, design, fashion, film, food and music - and analyze how those concerned view the concept of creativity, how they put it into practice, and how they bring different values (many of them not immediately connected with creativity as such) to bear on its evaluation. The course's disciplinary emphasis is on social anthropology and its methodological emphasis on participant-observation (often called ethnography) in order to understand the social processes that go into creativity, on the one hand, and fashion magazines, films, pots, perfumes, and ads as the products of those processes, on the other.

This course is an introduction and intermediate study of counterpoint, its function, and its effective relevance to compositions of renaissance, classical, and western music. It examines the principles of linear structure and voice-leading through an intensive study of species counterpoint. Investigation of various contrapuntal skills are made through analytic and written exercises, with emphasis on writing for keyboard, voices, or instrumental combinations that can be performed in class.

This course explores a wide variety of phenomena characteristic of late 20th- and 21st-century culture. The course examines notions such as fragmentation, irony, playfulness, and authenticity, as well as issues in relation to postmodern gender and sexuality, post-racial and post-human bodies, poststructuralism, and deconstruction; interrogates how postmodernism inflects questions of the stability of knowledge, the meaning of the subject, and the spectacle of the postmodern world; asks questions about the nature of global flow of goods, media, money, concepts, and ideologies; discusses literature, film, critical theory, visual arts, architecture, music, TV shows and others in the attempt of gaining a comprehensive understanding of what has been going on recently in world culture. A variety of texts are selected, ranging from detective stories and superhero movies to reality TV and fake news to contemplate on how we are determined by various postmodern phenomena. The dynamics of a constantly reshaped connection between knowledge, sensation, and language are closely investigated by different scholars and speakers coming from different fields and disciplines.