Life is unpredictable and chaotic, full of unexpected events which seem unexplainable and out of control. According to the Model Thinking course though, if you apply models to the way you think you’ll be able to make sense of the world around you.

Model thinking can be used everywhere. For example, it helps organise the information, make better predictions, design more effective institutions. It’s also used in strategic decision making in businesses. The course models will even explain to you why some countries are rich and some are poor.

The course claims that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don’t. And, moreover people who think with lots of models outperform people who use only one. As the instructor of the course says, the course is there to make you a better thinker.

The class will cover several models. For each model there will be an introductory lecture, which will be easy to understand for everybody. These introductory lectures will be followed by a set of more advances lectures that will explain a model in more details. There will be questions and quizzes throughout the lectures, and a final exam in the end, so the students who complete the course successfully will be able to receive a Statement of Accomplishment and a Verified Certificate.

All the materials for the course are free. The course will give you some basic information which should prepare you for deeper understanding of future social science classes, such as economics, political science, business, or sociology. The course doesn’t require any special background, but some basic algebra might be needed.

As the majority of Coursera courses Model Thinking is in English language, but there are subtitles available in Chinese, Ukrainian and Turkish.

And here’s some suggested reading for the course:

• The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, Scott E Page
• Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton Studies in Complexity), John Miller and Scott Page
• An Introduction to Models in the Social Sciences, Jean Lave and James March

The detailed information on the course syllabus can be found on its page.