Vassar Moodle

WELCOME TO NAS 105

This full-semester course is divided into two sections and includes a 2 hour lab throughout its entirety. The first six weeks are dedicated to learning the anatomy and physiology of the human skeleton, with students (1) identifying individual bones (complete and fragmentary), (2) identifying bone landmarks, (3) describing normal and abnormal bone growth processes (including common mutations), and (4) assessing bones for signs of pathology at the macroscopic level. Topics will be introduced through Dame Sue Black’s Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind, and then supplemented by more technical readings. The second half of the course will introduce students to the basic methods of forensic anthropology, focusing on how age, sex, race, and height of an individual can be determined from their bones. Students will also gain an understanding of how forensic anthropologists function within the legal framework of crime investigation and prosecution. Finally, students will explore current debates in forensic anthropology, such as the ethics of race and gender classification and the repatriation of remains. Students will be tested through two practical exams and a graded seminar activity.

Landscapes hold the tangible remains of cultural heritage in preserved buildings, erected monuments, and documented archaeological sites. But the ignored places are often those with the most interesting stories to tell. To an archaeologist, ruins are places where the past permeates into the present and asks to be remembered. Every town has its own ruins, whether it be the abandoned buildings of a once-bustling downtown or industrial district, an overgrown cemetery, or a road that simply ends. Such places may hold the more subversive histories of a place. This course considers the sanctioned and unsanctioned histories of places through intentionally preserved sites, persistent ruins, local lore, and ghost tourism. We use the National Register of Historic Places criteria of significance to evaluate such heritage sites within the Hudson Valley.

Course Materials for Theoretical Econometrics

This Moodle contains the materials for a course that I taught at Middlebury College in the Fall 2012.  I experimented with flipping the classroom, having the students watch lectures in videos before class and then doing problems together in class.  The videos were produced with Camtasia.  Having made them, I can see lots of ways to improve them.  Comments from others are welcome, too.

Here is the description of the course that I gave to the students:

Theoretical Econometrics will introduce students to the theoretical reasoning underpinning regression analysis as covered in ECON 0211. The course will begin with regression analysis as a method of data summary, focusing on geometric properties that hold for all data sets. We will introduce progressively the assumptions of the classical linear regression model to provide clear relationships between probabilistic assumptions and statistical properties and the arguments that justify them. We will conclude by exploring generalizations to basic regression that are motivated by violations of the classical assumptions. Throughout the course, students will encounter the interaction between economic and econometric modeling. (ECON 0211) 3 hrs. lect.