Public Lecture: From malaria to ChatGPT: the birth and strange life of the ran

March 31, 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Physical Sciences Building, Room 217

Come see a public mathematics lecture by Jordan Ellenberg, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics, Guggenheim Fellow, and NYTimes Best-selling author of “How Not to be Wrong” and “Shape”. Ellenberg is renowned for his creative approaches to number theory and for his unique ability to communicate mathematics to broad audiences. This talk will be accessible to a broad audience without any university-level background in mathematics. Abstract: Between 1905 and 1910 the idea of the random walk, now a major topic in applied math, was invented simultaneously and independently by multiple people in multiple countries for completely different purposes, from mosquito control to physics to finance to winning a theological argument (really!) I’ll tell some part of this story and also gesture at ways that random walks (or Markov processes, named after the theological arguer) underlie current approaches artificial intelligence, and what this tells us about the capabilities of those systems now and in the future.


Ticket Information
Free!

Event Sponsor
Mathematics, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Daniel Erman, 734-478-8588, erman@wisc.edu, https://sites.google.com/hawaii.edu/2025publiclectureinmathematics/home

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