Wed 30 Apr 14:00: Publishing your dissertation with Dr. Frida Trotter (Birkhäuser), MHM - Modern History of Mathematics
MHM - Modern History of Mathematics
- Speaker:
- Wednesday 30 April 2025, 14:00-16:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 2, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Wed 30 Apr 09:15: Practices of Prediction: Big Data as Foundation of Modern AI MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead
The paper is structured by three guiding questions: First, what (if anything) is Big Data? Second, how has ‘Big Data’ changed what data is and how data functions within models? Third how has ‘Big Data’ impacted conception of ‘complex phenomena’ and prediction? Around these three guiding questions the paper puts forward a narrative of how Big Data could become an approach to what we call ‘Artificial Intelligence’ today within research on language processing and later image recogntion. The presentation focuses on the industrial contexts in which ‘Big Data’ could emerge and recovers what actors saw as ‘economic imperatives.’ Therein, I aim to make ‘Big Data’ speak within the political economy of the technology industry. I attempt to analyse the intellectual debates around ‘probabilistic,’ ‘rational,’ or ‘empirical’ and ‘statistical’ approaches to provide a map of different conceptions of ‘empiricism’ and ‘rationalism’ that functioned as epistemological premises within AI research/ ML. The paper ends on a few considerations of the tech-industry today and how the industry has reconfigured imaginaries of the future.
MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead
- Speaker: Amira Moeding (University of Cambridge)
- Wednesday 30 April 2025, 09:15-10:15
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Fri 20 Jun 13:00: TBC
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Aron Kovacs, Queen Mary University of London
- Friday 20 June 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Potter room/Zoom.
- Series: DAMTP Friday GR Seminar; organiser: Xi Tong.
Fri 30 May 13:00: TBC
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Violetta Sagun, University of Southampton
- Friday 30 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Potter room/Zoom.
- Series: DAMTP Friday GR Seminar; organiser: Xi Tong.
Fri 16 May 13:00: TBC
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Benjamin Elder, Imperial College London
- Friday 16 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Potter room/Zoom.
- Series: DAMTP Friday GR Seminar; organiser: Xi Tong.
Fri 09 May 13:00: TBC
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Robbie Hennigar, Durham University
- Friday 09 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Potter room/Zoom.
- Series: DAMTP Friday GR Seminar; organiser: Xi Tong.
Wed 30 Apr 11:45: Tripos and Tribunals: The Wartime Diary of a Cambridge Senior Wrangler MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead
From 1 January 1915 to 29 July 1916, Francis Puryer White (1893-1969), a third-year Cambridge mathematics student, kept a detailed diary. In it he chronicled his academic, spiritual, and recreational life as he passed from undergraduate to postgraduate under the cloud of the First World War. In my talk I shall describe some of the contents of White’s diary, prefaced by a few remarks about diaries as sources in history of mathematics.
MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead
- Speaker: June Barrow-Green (The Open University)
- Wednesday 30 April 2025, 11:45-12:45
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Thu 01 May 11:45: The past present and future of computer proof in pure mathematics research. MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead
According to three Fields medallists interviewed by Epoch AI in 2024 to promote a new benchmark test “AI will change math research by enhancing proof development, generating novel conjectures, lowering entry barriers, and potentially automating research in the future.” A later announcement claimed that OpenAI’s O3 system had scored well above others on the test, accompanied by the admission that OpenAI funds Epoch AI, and tht O3 had had exclusive access to the test questions for training purposes. We consider these events in the light of current technological advances, and the factors, whether technical, social or economic, leading to the ongoing adoption, or otherwise, of previous computational interventions in mathematical practice. We ask what the role of historians might be in this rapidly changing landscape.
MHMW02 - Modern History of Mathematics: Looking Ahead
- Speaker: Ursula Martin (University of Oxford)
- Thursday 01 May 2025, 11:45-12:45
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Wed 14 May 16:30: Statistics Clinic Easter 2025 II
This free event is open only to members of the University of Cambridge (and affiliated institutes). Please be aware that we are unable to offer consultations outside clinic hours.
If you would like to participate, please sign up as we will not be able to offer a consultation otherwise. Please sign up through the following link: https://forms.gle/yCMudg1CrjUbFe2Q9. Sign-up is possible from May 8 midday (12pm) until May 8 midday or until we reach full capacity, whichever is earlier. If you successfully signed up, we will confirm your appointment by May 14 midday.
- Speaker: MR5 at the CMS
- Wednesday 14 May 2025, 16:30-18:00
- Venue: MR5.
- Series: Cambridge Statistics Clinic; organiser: tm681.
Fri 02 May 16:00: Instabilities in viscoelastic fluids: a long story
Many real-life fluids are not Newtonian and have to be modelled with something more complex than a single scalar viscosity. In this talk we will look specifically at dilute polymer solutions. We’ll see some simple models that capture the essential features of their behaviour, and then investigate how the properties of these models affect the stability of channel flow.
The story spans my whole research career so far, from an early theoretical prediction which was later observed in experiments, to a more recent realisation that there is still quite a lot we don’t understand. If time permits I will also discuss the latest place the research has taken me, which is neither viscoelastic nor unstable.
- Speaker: Prof Helen Wilson, University College London
- Friday 02 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: MR2.
- Series: Fluid Mechanics (DAMTP); organiser: Professor Grae Worster.
Fri 16 May 16:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Isabel Papanagnou
- Friday 16 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Fri 20 Jun 16:00: Has the thermal structure of cratonic lithosphere changed through time?
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Zachary Sudholz
- Friday 20 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Fri 23 May 16:00: Average physical structure of cratonic lithosphere, from thermodynamic inversion of global surface-wave data
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Sergei Lebedev ( University of Cambridge)
- Friday 23 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Thu 01 May 14:00: Modelling Interactions in Biology
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof. Sarah Teichmann, FMedSci, FRS (Cambridge)
- Thursday 01 May 2025, 14:00-15:30
- Venue: Seminar Room 3, RDC.
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Fri 06 Jun 16:00: Grain-scale models of transient diffusion creep
Abstract not available
- Speaker: John Rudge
- Friday 06 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Thu 08 May 11:45: Statistics and Geometry of Gromov-Wasserstein Distance RCLW01 - Uncertainty in multivariate, non-Euclidean, and functional spaces: theory and practice
The Gromov-Wasserstein (GW) distance, rooted in optimal transport (OT) theory, quantifies dissimilarity between metric measure spaces and provides a natural framework for aligning them. As such, GW distance enables applications including object matching, single-cell genomics, and matching language models. While computational aspects of the GW distance have been studied heuristically, most of the mathematical theories about GW duality, Brenier maps, geometry, etc., remained elusive, despite the rapid progress these aspects have seen under the classical OT paradigm in recent decades. This talk will cover recent progress on closing these gaps for the GW. We present (i) sharp statistical estimation rates through duality, (ii) a thorough investigation of the Jordan-Kinderlehrer-Otto (JKO) scheme for the gradient flow of inner product GW (IGW) distance, and (iii) a dynamical formulation of IGW , which generalizes the Benamou-Brenier formula for the Wasserstein distance. Central to (ii) and (iii) is a Riemannian structure on the space of probability distributions, based on which we also propose novel numerical schemes for measure evolution and deformation. [Joint work with Zhengxin Zhang (Cornell), Ziv Goldfeld (Cornell), Kristjan Greenewald (IBM Research), and Youssef Mroueh (IBM Research)]
RCLW01 - Uncertainty in multivariate, non-Euclidean, and functional spaces: theory and practice
- Speaker: Bharath Sriperumbudur (Pennsylvania State University)
- Thursday 08 May 2025, 11:45-12:45
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.
- Series: Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series; organiser: nobody.
Fri 20 Jun 16:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Zachary Sudholz
- Friday 20 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Fri 13 Jun 16:00: The splendours of Isfahan, Iran, enabled by Late Quaternary earthquake faulting and drainage reversal
Abstract not available
- Speaker: James Jackson
- Friday 13 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Fri 06 Jun 16:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: John Rudge
- Friday 06 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.
Fri 02 May 16:00: The tectonic, thermal, and temporal controls on the production of critical metal deposits
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Alex Copley
- Friday 02 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Tea Room, Old House.
- Series: Bullard Laboratories Tea Time Talks; organiser: David Al-Attar.