Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas (Transcript)

By David Brakke

Gnosticism: From Nag Hammadi to the Gospel of Judas is the companion book to the audio/video series of the same name. It contains a full transcript of the series as well as the complete course guidebook which includes lecture notes, bibliography, and more.

About this series:

Life is full of probabilities. Every time you choose something to eat, you deal with probable effects on your health. Every time you drive your car, probability gives a small but measurable chance that you will have an accident. Every time you buy a stock, play poker, or make plans based on a weather forecast, you are consigning your fate to probability. What Are the Chances? Probability Made Clear helps you understand the random factors that lurk behind almost everything—from the chance combinations of genes that produced you to the high odds that the waiting time at a bus stop will be longer than the average time between buses if they operate on a random schedule. In 12 stimulating half-hour lectures, you will explore the fundamental concepts and fascinating applications of probability. High Probability You Will Enjoy This Course Professor Michael Starbird knows the secret of making numbers come alive to non-mathematicians: he picks intriguing, useful, and entertaining examples. Here are some that you will explore in your investigation of probability as a reasoning tool: When did the most recent common ancestor of all humans live? Applying probabilistic methods to the observed mutation rate of human genetic material, scientists have traced our lineage to a female ancestor who lived about 150,000 years ago. How much should you pay for a stock option? Options trading used to be tantamount to gambling until about 1970, when two economists, Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, found a method to quantify those risks and to create a rational model for options pricing. What do you do on third down with long yardage? In football, a pass is the obvious play on third down with many yards to go. Of course, the other team knows that. Probability and game theory help decide when to run with the ball to keep your opponent guessing. What You Will Learn The course literally begins with a roll of the dice, as Professor Starbird demonstrates that games of chance perfectly illustrate the basic principles of probability, including the importance of counting all possible outcomes of any random event. In Lecture 2, you probe the nature of randomness, which is famously symbolized by monkeys randomly hitting typewriter keys and creating Hamlet. In Lecture 3, you explore the concept of expected value, which is the average net loss or gain from performing an experiment or playing a game many times. Then in Lecture 4, you investigate the simple but mathematically fertile idea of the random walk, which may seem like a mindless way of going nowhere but which has important applications in many fields. After this introduction to the key concepts of probability, you delve into the wealth of applications. Lectures 5 and 6 show that randomness and probability are central components of modern scientific descriptions of the world in physics and biology. Lecture 7 looks into the world of finance, particularly probabilistic models of stock and option behavior. Lecture 8 examines unusual applications, including game theory, which is the study of strategic decision-making in games, wars, business, and other areas. Then in Lecture 9 you consider two famous probability puzzles guaranteed to cause a stir: the birthday problem and the Let's Make a Deal® Monty Hall question. Finally, Lectures 10–12 cover increasingly sophisticated and surprising results of probabilistic reasoning associated with Bayes theorem. The course concludes with probability paradoxes. Take the Weather Forecasting Challenge One of the most familiar experiences of probability that we have on a daily basis is the weather report, with predictions like, There is a 30 percent chance of rain tomorrow. But what does th

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Great Courses
• Release date: Feb 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781598039153

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Reviews for Gnosticism

[szarka_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is a lot of good content here. But Drezner does such a bad job of summarizing the "libertarian" position in lecture 24 that I have to assume there are other serious flaws that I didn't catch in my quick listen to the rest of the lectures.