Bayrischzell Winter Excursion
Last 25th of February was the annual winter excursion of the Elite Master course in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. Students, alumni and professors gathered in Bayrischzell to listen to Prof. Stephan Hartmann speak on “Voting versus Deliberation” , and to Katja Klebig about the work she is currently doing for her PhD thesis, in which she studies sociological aspects of consequences of the creation of the programmes started by the Elitenetwork of Bavaria.
07.03.2013
Every year, after the end of the winter semester, all the TMP students, alumni and professors are invited to attend talks by guest speakers either related to the fields offered by the course, or different ones with some interesting connection to them. The event took place this year in the Hotel zur Post in Bayrischzell where people spent the night after an afternoon of presentations and networking away from lecture halls and class rooms of the university.
The first talk was given by Prof. Stephan Hartmann who joined the LMU in 2012 as Chair of Philosophy of Science in the Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and the Study of Religion at LMU Munich, Alexander von Humboldt Professor, and Co-Director of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. He spoke about some of his work in constructing Bayesian models for decision making by a group of agents. Applications of this include determining whether voting or discussing a statement until the group reaches a consensual decision is more likely to correctly assess the truth of that statement (i.e. a jury in a court). He illustrated his ideas using references to the movie “12 Angry Men” starring Henry Fonda.
Afterwards there was a surprise talk by Katja Klebig, a PhD student at Institute for Pedagogy of the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Her work focuses on finding out how different social, economical and cultural backgrounds for German students translate into future inequalities in their access to higher education, in particular if this happens in the courses of the Elite Network of Bavaria.
The rest of the day was free to socialize, visit the town, try winter activities such as skiing and hiking, play small games designed by the students to encourage networking, and a farewell dinner at the hotel. The next day we left Bayrischzell hoping to be back in 2014.
