University of Bristol

Machine Learning is the science of how we can build abstractions of the world from data and use them to solve problems in a data-driven way. This course allows students to both understand the principles upon which Machine Learning methods are based and learn the practical skills required to apply Machine Learning to solve real problems.

In this course, students progress through a series of weekly workbooks that consist of structure practical tasks, each with specific outputs and objectives. Reference images are provided for many of these tasks, so that students may assess their own progress and determine when they have successfully achieved the objectives of a workbook. Completion of these formative tasks provides students with the skills and knowledge required to pass the assessments. 

The course introduces students to British & Irish film and television through the study of a selection of examples and topics. These might cover specific periods, styles and traditions, themes, stars, filmmakers and television providers, among others. Through this approach, students are introduced to some of the ways in which British and Irish identities and cultures are represented and constructed on screen.

This course introduces students to the rich diversity of poetry in English and equips them with the skills and knowledge to better understand, and better enjoy, that poetry. The poetry studied ranges throughout the history of English Literature, and tutorial work generally focuses on the close reading of poetic texts. Weekly lectures and tutorials study matters including: rhyme and meter; poetic imagery; a number of poetic forms such as the sonnet; a number of poetic genres such as epic or pastoral. There is also space for students to look at poetry from a variety of aesthetic and historical contexts and to consider poetry from diverse authorships.

This course introduces students to a critical understanding of how crime and harm are represented through different media. These may include: TV, film, radio (e.g., documentaries, podcasts, drama, true-crime series), text (e.g., crime fiction, crime biographies, policy documents, music lyrics), visual culture (e.g., art and sculpture, graphics, court sketches, photojournalism, architecture, graffiti, theatre, advertising), news media (e.g., online, broadcast, print), and social media (e.g., trial by social media, citizen journalism, livecasting offending, performance crimes)

In the first half of the course, students are introduced to key concepts and economic models that can be used to understand how different identities shape outcomes, including identity economics, social norms and stereotypes, models of discrimination and stratification economics. The second half of the course looks in more detail at current economic research on a range of topics, including hate crime, labor market discrimination, gender-based violence, diversity, and inclusion.

In this course, students explore a range of contemporary performance practices and develop their own original devised performance material. Students experiment with a range of approaches that might include working with: text-based improvisation, movement-based performance, creative technologies, adaptation, and found or verbatim texts. The course advances students' knowledge of a range of contemporary theatre and performance makers who are producing devised theatre and performance. Through this exploration of a range of approaches to devising, students build a toolkit for making original theatre/performance and identify techniques and approaches that are of particular interest to students as practitioners. 

Content creators serve as powerful cultural intermediaries. They have the power to shift representation away from traditional screen industries, bringing into sharp focus key questions of social justice in the digital age, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class, while evolving, reiterating and challenging textual traditions and conventions of film and television. In exploring the interplay of technologies, creativity, screen works and everyday life, this course applies prior learning in film and television to the emergent cultural form of content creation as social media entertainment, analyzing processes of both production and reception. 

Cryptology—the modern discipline that combines construction and evaluation of cryptographic mechanisms—is a highly interdisciplinary field, deeply rooted in mathematics, but with branches in electronic engineering, computer science, and software and systems engineering. The course introduces fundamental aspects of cryptology from a modern perspective, focusing on design and security aspects of cryptographic schemes used for secure two-party communication, and of their underlying primitives.

This course offers an introduction to conceptual and philosophical issues raised in modern economics. By employing core theories and discussions from the philosophy of science, political philosophy, and ethics, students ask questions about the nature, scientific status, and implicit value assumptions in economics. For example: What is science and rigor, and how does it relate to economics? Can there be laws of economics? What is utility, and how does it relate to well-being? What is the role of models in economics? What are the normative assumptions implicit in economic research? How are ethical issues related to economics, and can economists incorporate value judgements? Can economics be associated with wider social justice?