The new MITx MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science, which opened for enrollment today, will help online learners develop their skills in the booming field of data science. The program offers learners an MIT-quality, professional credential, while also providing an academic pathway to pursue a PhD at MIT or a master’s degree elsewhere. “There are many online programs that provide a professional overview of data science, but they don’t offer the level of detail learners gain from an actual, residential master’s program,” says Professor Devavrat Shah, faculty director of the program and MIT professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). “This new MicroMasters program in Statistics and Data Science is bringing the quality, rigor, and structure of a master’s-level, residential program in data science at MIT to a wider audience around the world, and at a very accessible price, so people can learn anywhere they are while keeping their day jobs.”...

In unpredictable, high-stress situations, cognitive decision biases may lead to poor decisions....

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Among the many things rodents have taught neuroscientists is that, in a region called the hippocampus, the brain creates a new map for every unique spatial context — for instance, a different room or maze. But scientists have so far struggled to learn how animals decide when a context is novel enough to merit creating, or at least revising, these mental maps. In a study in eLife, MIT and Harvard University researchers propose a new understanding: The process of “remapping” can be mathematically modeled as a feat of probabilistic reasoning by the rodents. The approach offers scientists a new way to interpret many experiments that depend on measuring remapping to investigate learning and memory. Remapping is integral to that pursuit, because animals (and people) associate learning closely with context, and hippocampal maps indicate which context an animal believes itself to be in. “People have previously asked ‘What changes in the environment cause the hippocampus to create a new map?’ but there haven’t been any clear answers,” says lead author Honi Sanders. “It depends on all sorts of factors, which means that how the animals define context has been shrouded in mystery.”...