The Great Courses

In the 30 lessons of The Complete Guide to Baking Bread, you will learn the secrets to making dough and a wide variety of breads in your own kitchen. You’ll follow along at your own pace through four sections, as three renowned chefs demonstrate every step of the way: Zoë François, Michael Kalanty, and Richard Miscovich, all expert bakers, authors, and culinary educators. Their obvious skills and passion for their craft, step-by-step instructions, and ability to clarify the science—as well as the art—of bread baking will have you making bread in no time.

The goal of money management is to maximize our happiness at every stage of our lives. Whether you are a novice investor or a seasoned pro, a young person getting started in life or a Baby Boomer contemplating retirement, Money Management Skills is an excellent primer for creating financial security. Taught by financial expert and Texas Tech University professor Michael Finke, these 12 practical lectures will boost your confidence around money management. This is not a course for big investors looking for the next hot stock. Rather, these lectures are for regular people who want to make sound financial decisions without obsessing over the daily changes in the market. For most of us, a few basic principles of money management can help us get our financial houses in order, answering such questions as:

• What are the optimal uses of credit and debt?
• Is home ownership actually a good investment?
• How much insurance do I really need?
• Where should I invest my money?
• What should I do to prepare for retirement?

Our comprehensive five-part, 60-lecture course, Critical Business Skills for Success, is designed to give you just this kind of integrated, accessible introduction. Bringing together five prestigious and renowned business professors from some of America's top business schools, each of this course's five parts is a detailed look at a particular skill:

• strategy,
• operations,
• finance and accounting,
• organizational behavior, and
• marketing.

Here in one place is an authoritative guide to the five essential disciplines that everyone, entry-level employees and CEOs alike, needs to master in order to reap rewards in today's complex marketplace. In each part, you'll learn about everything from key terms and methodologies to research-backed strategies and case studies involving some of the world's most influential companies. This kind of well-rounded business education is useful to anyone who works in a company of any size. Whether you're in a leadership position, just starting out, or somewhere in between, these skills will help you understand all of the functions of a business, not just your area of specialty. It's also a great resource to have even if you already have an MBA, as you can return to this course again and again for advice and clarification. Bringing the MBA experience right to you, Critical Business Skills for Success demystifies the secrets of business and gives you insights that will help you achieve your goals.

Understanding Economics: Game Theory introduces you to the fundamentals of this fascinating subject through the lens of economics in 12 entertaining half-hour lessons taught by Professor of Economics Jay R. Corrigan of Kenyon College. Named one of America’s best college professors by The Princeton Review, Dr. Corrigan uses minimal math and maximal ingenuity, combined with insightful graphics, to illuminate scenarios such as:

• Swine Strategy: The fight for food between a big pig and a little pig reveals a Nobel Prize-winning concept in game theory. Devised by John F. Nash, the Nash equilibrium explains why the little pig should wait by the food trough while the big pig pushes the food-dispensing lever, which is located across the pen. The big pig then has to trot to the trough and nudge the little pig out of the way, but it is both animals’ best strategy.
• Ultimatum Game: Human psychology complicates game theory in the ultimatum game, in which two players interact anonymously. One proposes to divide a sum of money. The other either accepts the split or declines, in which case no one gets anything. In theory, the second player should accept any division, since something is better than nothing. But people often ignore this reasoning over fairness issues.
• Going, Going, Gone!: Auctions offer efficiency to both buyers and sellers. Professor Corrigan examines four basic types of auctions and the most effective strategies for each. One notorious pitfall is the “winner’s curse,” common in auctions where the value of the asset being sold is the same for everyone, but is unknown—for example, the acquisition of mineral rights. The winner typically overpays and risks financial ruin.

Professor Corrigan notes that in his economics classes, he makes the winner’s curse viscerally clear by having his students bid on a jar filled with coins. Inevitably, the winner is a student who overestimates the value of the contents—just as in real-world auctions for common-value goods. In these cases, learning that you are the winner can be bad news!

A basic working knowledge of this profoundly important tool can help us cut through an often confusing clutter of information—allowing us to make better decisions in our own lives or better understand the decisions facing other players in games. In Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, award-winning Professor Scott P. Stevens of James Madison University has designed a course meant for anyone looking to gain that knowledge. In 24 insightful lectures, he presents you with the fundamentals of game theory in a manner that is both engaging and easy to understand.

In 60 enthralling half-hour lectures, Physics and Our Universe: How It All Works proves that case, giving you a robust, introductory college-level course in physics. This course doesn't stint on details and always presents its subject in all of its elegance—yet it doesn't rely heavily on equations and mathematics, using nothing more advanced than high school algebra and trigonometry. Your teacher is Professor Richard Wolfson, a noted physicist and educator at Middlebury College. Professor Wolfson is author or coauthor of a wide range of physics textbooks, including a widely used algebra-based introduction to the subject for college students. He has specially designed Physics and Our Universe to be entirely self-contained, requiring no additional resources. And for those who wish to dig deeper, he includes an extensive list of suggested readings that will enhance your understanding of basic physics.

In 12 dazzling lectures, How Music and Mathematics Relate gives you a new perspective on two of the greatest achievements of human culture: music and mathematics. At 45 minutes each, these lectures are packed with information and musical examples from Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky to haunting melodies from China, India, and Indonesia. There are lively and surprising insights for everyone, from music lovers to anyone who has ever been intrigued by mathematics. No expertise in either music or higher-level mathematics is required to appreciate this astonishing alliance between art and science.

The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset is your opportunity to learn the strategies that make you a more diverse thinker and position you to break down institutional silos and build robust, effective teams. Delivered by Professor Scott E. Page of the University of Michigan—a pioneering researcher in his field—these 24 thought-provoking lectures are packed with case studies, cautionary tales, and formal mathematical methods that prove the case for cognitive difference. Whether you’re in a leadership position or striving to advance your career, Professor Page’s techniques will train you to

• tackle problems with the right mix of individuals,
• drive innovation and avoid collapse,
• adapt to changing circumstances and challenges,
• forecast outcomes with greater accuracy, and
• identify conditions in which diversity trumps ability.

By teaching you to “see around the bend” and analyze decisions from multiple perspectives, The Hidden Factor even has practical benefits beyond the workplace. From determining which house to buy to where to invest your money, life requires making smart predictions at every turn.

Join award-winning Professor Arthur T. Benjamin—one of The Great Courses’ most popular instructors and a veritable mathemagician at making math enjoyable for everyone—for an in-depth look at new, better, more math-oriented ways to play and win games in The Mathematics of Games and Puzzles: From Cards to Sudoku. In just twelve 45-minute lessons, you’ll learn a rewarding set of skills you can apply to countless games and puzzles, whether you’re playing them in your living room or in a crowded casino. You’ll also learn that behind even the simplest games lies proof of just how beautiful and far-reaching mathematics is in your everyday life.