Spring 2017 OLLI Catalog (Interactive)

PEER-LED CLASSES (Omnilore)
Omnilore Topics Offered For Spring 2016
Please note that the books listed for each course are only possible
candidates. Do not buy any until the pre-meeting and a decision
on the common reading is made.
Classes start January 3, 2017
and end April 29, 2017
Holiday periods are adapted to by
individual class voting.
(ALG) The Formula: How Algorithms
Solve All Our Problems…and Create More
Algorithms exert an extraordinary level of influence on our everyday
lives—from dating websites and financial trading floors, through to
online retailing and internet searches. Algorithms follow a series of
instructions to solve a problem and will include a strategy to produce
the best outcome possible from the options and permutations
available. Used by scientists for many years and applied in a very
specialized way, they are now increasingly employed to process the
vast amounts of data being generated in investment banks, in the
movie industry where they are used to predict success or failure at
the box office and by social scientists and policy makers.
Luke Dormehl takes readers inside the world of numbers, asking
how we came to believe in the all-conquering power of algorithms;
introducing the mathematicians, artificial intelligence experts and
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are shaping this brave new world,
and ultimately asking how we survive in an era where numbers can
sometimes seem to create as many problems as they solve.
Common Reading:
The Formula: How Algorithms
Solve All Our Problems…and
Create More, by Luke Dormehl
(November 2014)
(APP) Y’all Come…to Appalachia!
There has been a recent surge of interest in the mountain region of
the states of: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia,
Kentucky, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee,
Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Referred to as Appalachia, its
geographical boundaries exist not because of any legal boundaries,
but because of the shared history, culture, and environment of
mountain people in eastern North America. Appalachia offers a rich
slice of American history, but it is often steeped in mythic lore and
stereotyped as backward, uncultured and poor. For many
generations, the region has grappled with basic survival issues
along with environmental and labor exploitation; its residents h
ave been admired as self-sufficient small farmers and ridiculed as
hillbillies. This S/DG will attempt to get beyond the stereotypes of
the region and examine the long, complex, difficult and beautiful
history of the mountains and the people.
Common Reading:
Appalachia: A History
by John A Williams (April 2002)
Spring 2017 | www.csudh.edu/olli | (310) 243-3208 37