University of Copenhagen

This course builds up a toolbox of numerical optimization methods for building solutions in future studies, thereby making it an ideal supplement for students from many different fields in science. The course is taught both at a theoretical level that goes into deriving the math, and also on an implementation level with focus on computer science and good programming practice. Students participate in weekly programming exercises where they implement the algorithms and methods introduced from theory, and apply their own implementations to case-study problems like computing the motion of a robot hand or fitting a model to highly non-linear data. Topics include: first order optimality conditions, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions, Taylors theorem, mean value theorem, nonlinear equation solving, linear search methods, trust region methods, linear least-squares fitting, regression problems, and normal equations.

This course introduces the sub-discipline of economic sociology and discusses how this field is related both to other branches of sociology and to economics. It introduces core concepts and approaches in contemporary economic sociology, particularly sociological perspectives on markets, money, and the social embeddedness of these phenomena. The course also analyzes various types of social and economic phenomena by means of economic sociological concepts and theories. It is structured around the reading of Mark Granovetter’s SOCIETY AND ECONOMY: FRAMEWORK AND PRINCIPLES (2017), which in an exemplary fashion rehearses many of the key concepts in contemporary economic sociology. The readings are supplemented with research papers that exemplify some of the issues dealt with in the book as well as additional concepts and perspectives in economic sociology. In parallel with the reading of course literature, students develop an economic sociological analysis of a case of their own choosing, applying and discussing core concepts in economic sociology.